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As FAR as 

The East is From The West 


Tales of a Traveler who Toured the 
World Toward the Rising Sun 


BY 

DANIEL D. BIDWELL, A.B.,Yale 


(Sometime Sailor) 


HARTFORD 

S. S. SCRANTON & COMPANY 
1910 









Copyrighted by 
Daniel D. Bidwell 


• % 
* € < 


The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, Hartford, Conn. 
Illustrations by The A. Pindar Corporation 


c CU.J68134 


DEDICATED TO 


The Family 



THE BEST TWO-THIRDS 
PAULINE, “ Big Sister ” 
LITTLE JOE 






















































CHAPTER LIST. 


Chapter One .Into the Eye of the Rising Sun. 

Chapter Two .Madeira, the Methodist Mission. 

Chapter Three .The Travelers’ Club. 

Chapter Four .Where West Joins East.. 

Chapter Five .Two Seas Beyond Suez. 

Chapter Six .Bombay and Agra. 

Chapter Seven .The Paradise of the World. 

Chapter Eight .Calcutta, Child Marriage in India. 

Chapter Nine .The Paradise of the Missionary. 

Chapter Ten .Six Hundred Baptisms. 

Chapter Eleven .... Dutch Treatment. 

Chapter Twelve .... A Stray Nook of the China Sea. 
Chapter Thirteen . . A Section of Home. 

Chapter Fourteen . . Christmas in China. 

Chapter Fifteen .... The Land of the Rising Sun. 
Chapter Sixteen .... Yokohama and Tokyo. 

Chapter Seventeen .. Yokohama to Honolulu. 

Chapter Eighteen .. The Paradise of the Pacific. 
Chapter Nineteen .. Home Again. 













LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


Frontispiece — “ She was a man! ” 

Poseidon receives the youngest two children on the forecastle head 

PAGE 

Cleveland’s Course: 

Map No. i, . . . . . ii 

Map No. 2. . . . . . 12 

Map No. 3, . . . . .13 

Map No. 4, . . . . . 14 

Map No. 5, . . . . . 15 

Map No. 6, . . . . . 16 

Map No. 7, . . . . . 17 

Map No. 8, . . . . . 18 

A Closed Barouche in Madeira, ... 32 

The Faithful Forward Dining Room, . . 42 

In Gibraltar, ..... 48 

On the Boat Deck, . . . . 51 

In Cairo, ...... 56 

Street in Cairo, . . . . . 57 

“ Taking the Last Step,” .... 60 

On the Promenade Deck, .... 63 

Apollo Bunder in Bombay, • • • 75 

Head Waiter, . . . . # 77 

The Reverend Dr. Francis E. Clark, . . 84 

Temple of the Tooth, Khandy, ... 92 

Wife, Nine, Husband, Forty-five, . . . 100 

Norrendo Nath Sen, .... 102 

Jain Temple in Calcutta, .... 108 

Mrs. Alice J. Harris, . . . b II2 

The Best Stewardess in the World, . . I2 o 

Baptismal Font, . . . # .128 







List of illustrations 7 

PAGE 

The Trial, . . . . . 131 

The Law of Gravity, in Batavia, . . . 136 

In Front of the Pavilion, Kebon Banatang, . 140 

“ Beware of Him,” .... 143 

A Closed Barouche in Borneo, . . . 144 

Wild Men in Borneo, .... 146 

War Dance, . . . . .149 

Roman Catholic Cathedral in Manila, . . 155 

An Exile from Hartford, .... 167 

“A Sinister Grin Parted His Thin Lips,” . 171 

The Five-Story Pagoda, . . . . 173 

Under the Sun Flag, .... 178 

Group in Nagasaki, . . . .185 

Scene in Japan, . . . . .187 

Dai Butsu in Kamakura, . . . . 196 

Some of the Elect, .... 203 

Officers on the Bridge, . . . . 212 

Fancy Dress Ball, . . . . . 216 

Captain Dempwolf, .... 228 

“ Auf Wiedersehen,” . . . .231 








Copy7 ighted iqio by Underwood &f" Underwood , Mew York. 

“ SHE WAS A MAN ” 

(See page 129 ) 










FOREWORD. 


F ORTY-THREE years after the Quaker City started 
on her memorable trip to the east, a ship ten times 
her tonnage sailed from the same port, also to 
the east. The Quaker City was a pioneer; she 
paddled her way across trackless waters to the eastern 
Mediterranean with a party of excursionists, and returned. 
The ship ten times her tonnage was also a pioneer; she 
churned her way across the same waters and through 
a canal not opened at the time the earlier pioneer sailed 
and down the Red Sea and across the Arabian Sea and 
around India and ever eastward into the eye of the rising 
sun, till she passed within the Golden Gate. She was the 
Cleveland, captained and crewed by Germans and freighted 
with over six hundred Americans, the first party of pleasure- 
seekers to travel those eight thousand leagues on one ship. 
The first pioneer ship found a worthy chronicler in Mark 
Twain. The second finds an unworthy one in the author of 
this volume. 

It is far from the author’s intention to convey solid 
information about the places visited west of Suez. Peste! 
Are there not guide books and are they not likely to be 
more patient than the author? About the places east of 
Suez — that is another story. Some of these are far out 
of the line of travel even of the straggling votaries of 
Wanderlust who reach those regions. Batavia and Labuan 
are little visited by white feet not from the Low Countries. 
Labuan in particular is terra nova for the pen, and if the 
author has failed in describing that nook, the fault is his. 

In the course of the trip the author contributed letters 
to The Hartford Times, The Springfield Republican, The 



IO AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

Boston Globe , and other papers. Parts of some of the letters 
are made the foundation of several of the chapters. 

Acknowledgments are gratefully extended to John P. 
Davidson, Walter R. Denison, Thomas A. Peabody, and 
to numbers of other fellow passengers who have heartened 
the author in his labor. 


Hartford, Connnecticut, June 26, 1910. 



CHAPTER I. 


INTO THE EYE OF THE RISING SUN. 

T HERE are still lands in the far eastern seas where 
unfamiliar peoples live with strange customs 
little known even to travelers who seek odd 
recesses. There are still coasts and islands 
where peoples scarcely better than half-barbaric are 
barely beginning to emerge into the edge of civilization. 
There are mossy ruins and beautiful palaces, snow-clad 
mountains, ill-tempered volcanoes waking from century-long 
drowsiness, tropical jungles, terraced vineyards, and isolated 
plantations which rarely meet the eye or feel the tread of 
feet from the western world. There are proas and cata¬ 
marans which may trace their lineage far back toward 
Father Noah’s forgotten day. There are sampans and junks 
which search for pearls in out-of-the-way waters, or for 
loot in the Pearl River and the China Seas. 

In short, there is strange life in almost myriad phases 
ashore and afloat in that far bourn beyond the desert gate 
where West blends into East. That life has its own lure 
for the children of Wanderlust, who have the fever-poison 
of travel in their blood, and who come to their own in time, 
who journey beyond the fashion-plate bounds. 

Even now thousands of our countrymen believe their 
travels complete, have they reached Catania or Cairo or 
Constantinople; more than complete, have they penetrated 
to Bombay and Malabar Hill. The Far East’s lure has not 
fevered them. 

To see some of those far lands and to view some of 
that wild life at closest range, was the object of the six 
hundred voyagers of the staunch Cleveland which sailed on 


12 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


an October morning from New York and turned her prow on 
the arc of a great circle into the eye of the rising sun. 

It was a giant of the ocean on which they fared, a 
majestic ship of eighteen thousand tons, with the black, 
white, and red of the German empire at her after jack staff. 
It was with less fuss than a debutante makes in getting into 
a new gown that the giant warped out from her dock 
and began a voyage which continued over three months and 
one-half and goes down in the history of shipping as the 
first in which a large party of seekers of pleasure and educa¬ 
tion practically circumnavigated the world, in one vessel. 


y 



Course of the Cleveland from 
New York to San Francisco 
October i6, 1909, to January 31, 1910. 


Map No. 1 : New York eastward on the Atlantic 
October 16 to October 22 

It was with Teutonic thoroughness that the start was made. 
Yet, to hundreds of the tourists the workman-like smooth- 














AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


13 


ness was less to the mind than the spell of the romance of 
the ocean and the long voyage. Back in other days voyages 
of such length were carefully logged. Even with us 
diaries galore were launched. And so it is, that the run 
across the wide Atlantic will for this chronicle be kept in 
the shape of a log — or something like it. 

First Day Out. Dreamland still held us in thrall when 
the ship passed Miss Liberty and made ready to courtesy 
to the Narrows. It held us till a bugler with lungs of 
leather summoned us from the berths, with a call to the 
world of consciousness and sin which came over an hour 



Map No. 2: Madeira and Western Mediterranean Sea 
October 23 to October 31 


later than its mate comes on a United States warship. To 
those inland landlubbers not to the manner born the bugler 
was a novelty and there was a charm in the call. 

The evening before the start the tourists had been told 
off into two armies, those who were to be the first to attack 


















H 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


the ship’s mess, and those who were to attend the second 
sitting. The first of the bugles for breakfast rallied the 
first army en masse; there seemed to be no victim of the 
malady of the sea. Both dining rooms, the forward and the 
after, were Meccas. Let it be here explained that the after 
dining room was of “ class.” It was even as the forward. 
In the months just before the start, when the ship was 
merely an Atlantic ferry-boat, it was the refectory of the 
passengers of the second cabin, but now it was, for the 
world tourists, at parity with the forward dining apartment. 
Both rooms reach across the ship. The hours for the first 



Map No. 3: Eastern Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea and Arabian Sea 
October 31 to November 12 


sitting are: For breakfast, 7:45 a. m.; luncheon, 12 
meridian, which is more nautical than noon; and dinner, 
5 130 p. m. The sybarites who wish more time for prepara¬ 
tion sit an hour later. 

Breakfast over, it was to doze or to recline in a steamer 
chair, if you were past fifty, or perhaps a restful smoke. 














AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 15 

Were you young and charming, it was a stroll along the 
promenade deck, or a saunter to the fo’c’sle head or a few 
turns around “ the island ” in the waist. 

The mid-forenoon found human nature in evidence in 
variety, shipboard human nature. Stately dowagers who 
were fat, frowsy, and fifty-five were languid in steamer 
chairs, with their feet smothered in rugs. Or some few 
were at the rail. Now, don’t be too suspicious; the sea 
was smooth and quiet. Another few were at writing desks. 
Young women were still treading, most of them, the planks 
of the promenade deck; some were not indisposed toward 


+0 



Map No. 4: India to Java 
November 12 to December 14 


a flirtation. A number of women and several of the men 
were in the music room, discovering methods for becoming 
acquainted which satisfied Mrs. Grundy. A quarter or 
some like fraction of the men of the cruise were in the 
smoking-rooms, main and after, but not all of these were 
gladdening the purveyors of the weed; a fraction of the 
fraction were at the writing tables or were reading guide 
2 












1 6 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

books in which the Mediterranean was the piece of 
resistance. 

A corporal’s guard, or it might be two corporals’ guards, 
were busy in debate or persuasion with deck stewards as to 
the location of steamer chairs, and some of the dear ladies 
soon joined in that divertisement. On the afternoon before 
the ship sailed, wise guys and wise virgins, call them what¬ 
ever you wish, had arranged with the stewards for favorite 
locations. Some of the genuine thoroughbreds who have 
crossed the Atlantic more times than they have fingers, 
selected positions on the starboard side of the promenade 


Map No. 5: Java and Borneo 

[The scale of each axis is double 
that in the other maps] 

December 12 to December 17 



deck near the elevator. This “ country ” is, on the warm 
side, a virtue till we reach Port Said, and after arrival 
there the wise men and women who pre-empted places on 
the promenade deck will endeavor in persuasions popular 
with deck stewards to obtain cool coigns on the hurricane 
deck and over the poop. 

A couple of hundreds of the passengers are at work in their 
staterooms, unpacking and stowing apparel and arranging 
with cabin stewards and the baggage rooms force for the 
removal of empty trunks. And, now, a word about our 
own room, headquarters for four people for over three 







f 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 17 

months. It is the largest in the ship, barring the editions 
de luxe. It is rigged with two portieres and is in fact 
tw T o staterooms. There are pegs galore on three walls, 
enough to appal a mere man, but the better half is sure 
that we shall need them all, and more too. God forbid 
that! There is an appliance for curling hair. There are 
nettings for receiving the riff raff and the ruck of guide¬ 
books, stationery, topees, and small souvenirs which are to 
accumulate. We stow T two steamer trunks and two suit¬ 
cases and hang raincoats on unobstrusive pegs, uncharted in 
a dark corner. There are stools, but we find that by 



Map No. 6; Borneo to Japan and the North Pacific 
December 16 , igog, to January 15, lgio 


inducing a corner of a steamer trunk to emerge from under 
a berth we can economize room and can retire the stools. 

We find that some of the thoroughbreds are manceuver- 
ing with such strategy with cabin stewards (who are half¬ 
backs of the devil or are halfbacks of Heaven, according 
to the inducements employed on them), that the halfbacks 














1 8 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

agree to bring up “ hold baggage ” to the hatch cover hard 
by. Most of the baggage is large-sized trunks and is sup¬ 
posed to be kept continuously deep down in the bowels of 
the ship till near the end of the trip. The thoroughbreds 
are hard at work unpacking impedimenta (Pauline is study¬ 
ing Caesar, and she says that impedimenta is Latin for light 
underwear). The thoroughbreds are happy in the knowl¬ 
edge that if the trunks remain on the hatch cover they 
save time and if the trunks are taken back to the hold they 
have saved time and gained comfort, for when we are east 


4-0 


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r - 

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>L 


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-L 




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SLANO 

EQL 

S 

1 

r A T 

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ibS 

IQ _ 

175 

180 

175 

/tr 

/a 


Map. No. 7: The North Pacific Ocean 
January ij to January 22 


of Suez the hold will have an atmosphere which would 
make it a reasonable second to H—. 

A bugle call brings us out of the staterooms, and we 
traverse sundry passages to the after dining-room and sit 
near a port-hole. A glance overhead brings joy. There 
is, silent and idle, an electric fan. East of Suez that fan 
will be more blessed than a sermon. 














AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 19 

It is not difficult to become acquainted with the table- 
mates near-by. One is a jolly, companionable young man 
of the day from Greater New York, who has the rare 
faculty of forming opinions instantaneously and of impart- 
ing them without loss of time. Another is his roommate, 
a quiet and careful reasoner. Strange to say, the former is 
Teutonic. A third is a traveler who has in mind a trip 
to the South Seas on the trail of Jack London. The 
others at the table are too distant to allow of extended 
conversation. We are to eat and talk together for three 


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120 

us 


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ISLANDS 


Map 8: Hawaii to San Francisco 
January 23 to January 31 


months and more, and travelers’ tales will be told and 
queer yarns will be spun at this board, here in the forward 
port corner of the after dining-room. 

In the afternoon some of the young men induced a 
sailor who is addressed as “ quartermaster ” to break out 
the material for a deck game, improperly called shuffle- 











20 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


board. Introductions were obtained to some of the young 
ladies, and all the afternoon long the discs were pushed 
over the live-oak planks and scores possible and impossible 
were made. On the deep there are many wonders, and one 
of the most mysterious is that game. 

Hundreds of the tourists occupied the afternoon in 
finding themselves and the ship. They still unpacked and 
stowed. They found the library and the library steward. 
They found the elevator. They asked about the ship’s 
post-office. They talked with one and another of the four 
“ chaperons,” ladies of the staff who are to explain 
mysteries, to conduct lectures and entertainments, to inform 
passengers in advance of arrival at ports about reliable shops 
at which to buy, and are to be blessed of the tourists 
ever after. 

Dinner found the tourists happy, hungry, and finding 
themselves. From the last mentioned state or action might 
be excepted the thoroughbreds. There are many things 
more which might be logged, but little Joe is sleepy. He 
is insistent and I must turn in. Thus ends the day. 

Second Day Out. Into the eye of the sun we are 
boring; that is, our course is a little south of east. The 
uninitiated are learning that in a trip to the east the bugler 
sounds his call half an hour earlier than on the preceding 
morning. This is because the fine old world has been so 
long in the habit of revolving from west to east that it 
continues the operation and at the same time your watch 
remains telling its tale to Father Time as if that watch 
were back in New York. You meet the sun farther to the 
east, say about six or seven meridians or degrees of longi¬ 
tude. Breakfast comes earlier than it would have been 
served in Little Old New York. In time you reach a 
degree which means seven o’clock in the morning when it 
is just four o’clock in New York. You are supposed to 
turn the hands of your watch ahead every day, but some¬ 
how there is a mystery when it comes to the practical 
working out of the problem. On some ships there are 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


21 


several clocks and, so the thoroughbred travelers say, no 
two of them agree, even within two minutes. Yesterday 
morning it was the “ Captain’s Call ” which awakened us, 
a sweet, plaintive little air, bugle-played though it was. 
This morning it was “ Nearer, My God, to Thee ” which 
roused us into the realm of consciousness. We are told 
that on week days ’twill be the “ Call ” and on Sundays a 
religious air will be the summoner. Today is a Sunday and 
it is begun aright. 

Unfamiliar with the gain in time which a voyage into 
the eye of the rising run means, more than a score of the 
voyagers fell into the dire clutch of circumstance this 
morning and were late for the glorious German pancakes. 
Little Joe was one of those unfamiliar. Little attention 
paid he when it was carefully explained that every degree 
of longitude figured four minutes of time. In fact, he 
became disturbed when the mathematics of the matter were 
gone into for the second time. He knocked off from the 
grapefruit, and was impelled to comment, rather caustically, 
“ Popper, I’m sorry that we brought you along! ” 

On the bulletin at the foot of the main companion way 
was a notice proclaiming that a good clergyman, whose 
name was given, would preach in the forward dining-room 
at 10:30. That time mystery still enfolded a number of 
the faithful, and some of these came early and some nearly 
half an hour late. 

The first hymn was appropriate, but not reassuring to 
the timid. It was the “ Nearer, My God, to Thee ” which 
had awakened us. The sermon was preluded with a short 
narrative which whetted interest in the discourse itself. 
The clergyman was once, said he, on a trip on the same 
ocean which he was then crossing, and conversing with a 
shipmate who confessed that he had not been in a church 
in a year. The tourist would listen to the clergyman’s 
sermon the next Sunday were the clergyman to preach from 
a text which the tourist would select. It was like bar¬ 
gaining a pig in a bag, but the clergyman consented, struck 


22 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


the bargain. Thereupon his friend announced as the text 
“ A-m-e-n.” The good minister meditated, staggered at 
first, then militant, and wrote a sermon which was that 
which he was to read in the Cleveland’s forward dining-room. 

It proved to be a well written effort, strong and 
powerful, vivid, richly illustrated, and interesting. The 
congregation was an entirely spontaneous gathering. It was 
in the main, devout. In it were some twenty-five men 
and women on their way to attend the fourth biennial con¬ 
vention of the world’s Christian Endeavor Society at Agra 
in India. 

Evening found us well out in the wide Atlantic. After 
the second sitting a song service was held in the forward 
dining-room. Then dining-rooms, smoking-rooms, social 
hall, and saloons gradually thinned and from many a berth 
came evidence that any court would accept as proof that the 
voyagers were in Slumberland. 

Thus ends the day. 

Third Day Out. The thoroughbreds are wise as to 
the baths. They long since made their peace with the bath 
stewards, and great is their reward, as for them is choice 
of time for those indispensable rites which follow the 
“ Captain’s Call.” Then, before breakfast, for the young 
and lusty of the thoroughbreds, the deck, preferentially 
the promenade deck. 

After breakfast, the deck, for all hands except the very 
old and the very lazy and the gentlemen who are intrenched 
in the smoking-rooms. These latter bid well to make their 
headquarters there and to use the doors only as sally ports. 

The deck! It is like stepping back ten or fifteen years 
to breathe this salt-freighted air and to look off over league 
after league of trackless blue to a free sky-line. The air 
is as pure as there is on earth. We are getting sea legs and 
are proud of it. Let the deck stewards look to their laurels. 
The deck stewards can walk the decks without balancing, 
but there are others. 

Among the older men, barring those who are little 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


23 


better than semi-invalids, fraternizing is the order of the 
morning. Scores of the gray-haired sinners are chatty and 
companionable in the two smoking-rooms. Out in the 
promenade deck alleys, in the brisk breeze, thoroughbreds 
and near-thoroughbreds are spinning yarns about trips to 
Constantinople, to Norway, to Demarara. I heard a cer¬ 
tain one of these. It sounded apocryphal. It inspired 
dubiety. 

It sounds to me like a lie, 

It sounds to me like a lie, 

It may be so, 

But I don’t know; 

It sounds to me like a lie. 

Some of the young people were having a high old time 
this morning. They gravitated to the Marconi station 
’way up on the port side of the boat deck and after a 
debate, in which one scientist asserted that Marconi was 
the discoverer after whom Coney Island was named, they 
persuaded the big “ quartermaster ” to break out the para¬ 
phernalia for ring toss and to mark out a diagram for a 
game of shuffleboard. By the way, the sailor has a com¬ 
plexion like a tea rose and more than one of the Teutons 
on the ship has its duplicate. 

The lads and the lasses lay to and for well over an 
hour they pushed the wooden discs and tossed the corded 
hoops. They had a jolly time, and why not? The boys 
were gingersome and healthy, full of the joy of life. The 
girls were pretty (well they knew that) and they were 
giggly. From time to time a father or a mother appeared 
somewhere off in the middle distance, say near boat No. 6, 
and smiled as Harold or Dorothy, Howard or Eleanor 
pushed a disc into the ten reservation. The young people 
were enjoying themselves in innocent open air games. And 
so in latitude thirty-nine north and longitude fifty-six 
west the newer generation built up health and invited 
freckles and tan. 

Out here in the mid-Atlantic there is something which. 


24 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


discourages conventionality. The comradeship is delightful. 
A white-haired saint was passing a matronly friend who was 
fortified in rugs on a steamer chair, and he observed that a 
rude breeze had disturbed a rug so as to reveal an ankle. 
Instead of moseying by with considerately averted glance, 
he paused, hesitated, and was lost. He played the part of 
the Good Samaritan and mummified the ankle with a 
wrapping of the rug. Ashore the matron might have 
marveled at this, but here she rewarded him with a cordial 
“ Thank you so much! ” 

This morning the captain came around, traversing all 
the decks and greeting passengers. He is a typical officer 
of the German merchant marine, impressive, portly, and 
affable. The tan of Old Ocean is laid deep on his broad 
cheek. In other days he sailed on Oriental waters. He 
was in command of a collier when Rojestventsky fared 
forth on that ill-fated voyage which ended in the memorable 
combat with Togo. Captain Dempwolf was in the digni¬ 
fied frock coat with its four side stripes of gold when he 
made his round today. He is a red hot favorite with scores 
of the ladies. Pauline thinks that he is the next thing to 
a demi-god. 

The afternoon saw a meeting of Knights Templars, and 
it was then decided to form a Masonic Club on the ship. 
Another meeting is to be held in a week. Nearly every 
other man on the ship appears to be a Mason of low or 
high degree. There are scores of tourists who are still 
finding themselves. In fact, nearly every soul among them, 
except the thoroughbreds, speaks of going “ down stairs ”! 
Nearly every soul calls this splendid giant of eighteen 
thousand tons a “boat”! Perhaps they will discover ere 
we reach Gibraltar that she is something more!* But one 
should pity, not gird at, such landlubbers. 

It is a peaceful evening. A royal moon rides high in 

* In this, as is proved, the author was sorely disappointed. To the day 
of the landing at San Francisco, nearly every woman on board, except the 
chaperones, termed the Cleveland a “ boat.” 



AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 25 

the sky. Fleecy clouds drift past. The silvered bow wave 
splashes high from beneath the forecastle. Far-flung froth 
is churned from the screw. Music rises and floats aft from 
the orchestra in the social hall. Incense comes from the 
smoking-room. The masthead light shines white and soli¬ 
tary far above the hurricane deck. A tour along the rail 
shows no light on the sea. The sky is stabbed with tiny 
diamond gleams. The ship is alone on the waters, a thou¬ 
sand miles from shore. 

Thus ends this day. 

Fourth Day Out. We are finding ourselves to an 
extent, at least enough to allow of a quick kind of an inventory 
of the bulk of the passenger list. We have portly dowagers 
who are fat, fair, and fifty-five. We have trim maidens 
who are slim, saucy, and sixteen; dear old unbending 
financial terrors of sixty who wear names of magic in their 
home cities; globe trotters and other thoroughbred sea¬ 
going travelers; physicians who have made a million or 
less; attorneys who have helped corporations to make a 
million or more; clergymen who should inherit millions 
of rewards in the world to come; the president of the 
Baltimore Chamber of Commerce. We have married men, 
bachelors, and one bachelor of philosophy from Paris, Ill. 
We have two college professors. We have Canadians, 
Americans, and Teutons. We have a lady eighty-two years 
old, and a lit’tle girl six years old. As for the boys Little Joe 
is the youngest; he is eight years young. If variety is the 
spice of life there is little need for Worcestershire sauce on 
the stout ship. But in the inventory of passengers the 
climax is a figure of international reputation, the Reverend 
Dr. Francis E. Clark, founder of the Christian Endeavor 
movement, which now numbers three million followers. 

Imagine a hotel hoisted by the wand of a mighty 
magician and let down to float in the mid-Atlantic; your 
fancy would picture something not very far away from the 
ship. Not the least of the hotel-like conveniences is the 
elevator, which is “ manned ” by a spruce boy in a neat 


26 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


spick-and-span uniform, who looks as if he might have 
stepped out from a band-box of Merry Widow size. The 
lad emerges with a blandly respectful air and the style of 
the Bishop of Sodor and Man. He quietly salutes you with 
his “ blease,” spoken in a manner which shows that he is right 
proud of his English. 

Another convenience is the grill room, located far aft 
and over the after smoking-room. 

This evening a group of young tourists is enjoying a 
Sangerfest on the lee side of the promenade deck. The jolly 
captain, burly and affable, but withal dignified, is at this 
moment leading the young voices in “ The Watch on the 
Rhine.” 

Thus ends this day. 

Fifth Day Out. It develops that there are nine children 
in the company which is to belt the world; children under 
twelve years of age. Joe is bearing his distinction meekly 
as the youngest boy. He is more interested in the sailors’ 
uniforms than in his age. The youngest girl is a dear little 
tot from Louisville, and the next youngest girl is a beautiful 
little fairy from Brooklyn. There is a boy from an inland 
town in Massachusetts whose manners are Chesterfieldian 
perfection, who sets a good example for Joe, whose lapses 
are not many nor extreme, to be sure, but who inclines more 
toward Roosevelt than Chesterfield. 

Life on the ocean wave is far different than in the days 
of Marryatt, or even the days when Clark Russell appeared 
with his “ Ocean Free Lance,” and some of the latest 
novelties have appeared little in print. One of these 
novelties is a dance on a large scale, that is, the scale of the 
dance given on the ship this evening. 

It was in the waist that the festivities took place. 
Scarlet cords extend athwartships on the saloon or D deck, 
from rail to rail, roping off the spectators from the terp- 
sichoreans. The orchestra was grouped by the mast and 
was barred in by rails decorated with the red, white, and 
blue of Old Glory and the black, white, and red of Old 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


27 


Germany, the musicians occupying a space known among 
passengers as “ the island.” Around the space and along the 
deck rails were banners of many of the countries, maritime 
like Japan, and inland such as Switzerland. 

The blood rising sun of Imperial Japan was in con¬ 
spicuous evidence and the flag of Russia was not far distant. 
The crosses of St. Andrew and St. George were not 
unfriendly to the colors of Germany this evening, however 
the two great nations may regard their commercial relation 
elsewhere. The gorgeous ensign of Austria and its eagles 
floated by the side of a star and crescent of Turkey. It was 
an educational spectacle in decoration, but, truth to tell, 
little cared one in ten of the dancers, outside of the officers 
of the ship, for the education. 

Officers in full uniform, young girls in brilliant cos¬ 
tumes, and young men in dinner coats made up the mass of 
the dancing corps. As the Teuton orchestra played two- 
steps, waltzes, and barn dances the votaries of Terpsichore 
circulated around the heel of the great yellow mast and 
passed the sun of Japan and the green and canary of Brazil, 
little mindful of the flags or their meaning. 

Sailors in blue uniforms stood watch over the scarlet 
cord. Stewards in white jackets flitted aft from the gallery 
with lemonade, carefully reserved for the dancers. Behind 
the cord fathers and mothers sat on steamer chairs and on 
stools brought from their staterooms. 

Over a thousand miles from the nearest land, and that 
a Portuguese island, the dancers tripped in the enjoyment 
of young life. ’ It was the first time that their pulses had 
stirred to the poetry of motion and music in mid-ocean and 
on the oaken planks of the Cleveland’s waist. Until well 
into the evening the music called, and the dancers responded. 
The great brass ship’s bell struck three times ere the 
festivities concluded. 

Thus ends this day. 

Sixth Day Out. A meeting was held this morning to 
form a camera club. The camera fever is in the veins of 


28 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


at least a couple of hundred of the ship’s list. There is a 
human nature in fever and in the camera fever, in particular. 
Some of the victims have the poison for a day and the next 
morning are over it. Others have it intermittently. Others 
have it forever. 

I have said that there is human nature in the use of the 
camera. Let me illustrate. 

This morning a maiden from a Connecticut town and 
one from New York City came out to the waist. Each 
took a snap-shot of the same view. The New Yorker 
gave more attention to her own pose, than to the photography. 
There would be difficulty in naming the mental process 
through which she passed when she took the photograph. 
Whatever serves her for gray matter was spent on her atti¬ 
tude. It was clear that her only idea was to be dainty and 
stylish and to slaughter time. The photograph was a joke; 
were the picture to be a fizzle, so much the better the joke. 

The girl from Connecticut was full of business. She 
was a novice in photography, but she was a girl of gumption 
and resourcefulness. If the -work were worth doing at all, 
it were worth doing well; so it could be seen that she 
reasoned. She studied light and shadows with a mind 
capable of self-training. The girl from Gotham cared only 
to be amused and to be a toy. The girl from Connecticut 
was, mainly from her own mental backing, qualifying her¬ 
self to become a fair amateur photographer. And, further¬ 
more, was the better fitted to become a wife and mother. 

The first series of lectures to be given on ports and 
lands to be visited in the course of the next three months 
took place this evening. The forward dining-room — our 
old friend, the forward dining-room — was the lecture hall. 
A clergyman from Minneapolis was the lecturer. His sub¬ 
ject was Madeira and Gibraltar. Perhaps, perforce, little 
was said about Madeira and most of the attention was given 
to the Rock. Too little is really known about the wonderful 
Island of Eternal Summer. 

Thus ends this day. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


29 


Seventh Day Out. For the first time since the cruise 
began, a school of porpoises tendered escort this morning. 
There was a flutter of excitement as the ungainly animals 
gamboled and cavorted and flopped for a couple of hours. 

From this excitement to the Daughters of the American 
Revolution is a far cry. The distance was covered before 
the middle of the afternoon, when a chapter of the patriotic 
organization was formed and named after the ship. And 
from the D. A. R. to Cairo is another distant journey, 
but it was traversed this evening, when the clergy¬ 
man who preached on Sunday, lectured in the faithful 
forward dining-room on the dusty ancient city of Rameses. 
He saw the Mohammedan religion from his own angle 
of view and showed the superiority of the Christian, 
even in the economic development of a country or a 
race. To the religious workers on board his lecture was 
of particular interest and to the observers in futuro it was 
also productive of reflection. 

Thus ends this day. 

Eighth Day Out. Who shall say that life aboard ship 
interferes with domestic discipline? This morning Little 
Joe said a bad word: when he turns in this evening his 
mouth shall be washed out. 

Cause and effect? This morning a musical club was 
organized; immediately the wind began rising. All day 
long the wind has been growing fresher (so has Joe), but 
the ship is as steady as the Old South Church. 

Toward the middle of the afternoon a smudge was 
observable almost dead ahead. It was a tiny blot at first, 
then rose above the horizon and gradually took shape. Yet 
a little while longer, the chronicler of this log turned to a 
lady by the rail and reported: 

“ Sail, ho! ” 

“Where is it?” said she. 

“ A point off the port bow.” 

“ Mercy me! Why, what under the sun do you mean? ” 

And that led on to a lecture on the ship’s bearings, not 


30 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


unlike the talk which a pitying physician gives to the laity 
on First Aid to the Injured. 

The craft proved to be a steamship, the first seen since 
Sandy Hook dropped astern. She put her helm to port and 
passed about two or three miles distant, with scores of 
glasses trained on her. From her after jack-staff fluttered 
a flag, red, white, and green, whether Italian or Mexican 
was the problem before the glasses for a few minutes, till 
she came abeam. Finally a pair of keen eyes picked out a 
device in the stripe and it was accordingly revealed that the 
stranger was from the kingdom, not the republic. Whether 
the keen eyes actually made out the shield and the white 
cross of Savoy remains to this day a mystery. 

That rising wind — it sub-divided energy. The author 
had less reserve tonight than in the morning. And it really 
is too rough to wash out Little Joe’s mouth just now. 

Thus ends this day. 

Ninth Day Out. It was before sunrise that the big 
German on lookout watch reported land. The first bugle 
somehow seemed to tell the tale to hundreds of the tourists, 
and many a bath was syncopated that an earlier look at the 
land might be obtained. Long before the first breakfast 
call sounded the fo’c’s’le head and the boat deck forward 
and the hurricane deck were speckled with voyagers, some 
in ulsters and some in two minds between ulsters and spring 
coats. Those ulstered were lamenting in less than half 
an hour. 

And thus it is that we are approaching Funchal, capital 
of the Island of Madeira and of the group of the Madeira 
Islands. 


CHAPTER II. 


MADEIRA AND THE METHODIST MISSION. 


S OMEHOW little about Funchal has penetrated 
print. Of that little, less is in popular print, and 
of that less, scarcely a fraction, is informing. 

Our first glimpse of dear forgotten Funchal, 
quaint Portuguese old port marooned away from the track 
of the twentieth century and laid up in the lavender and 
cedar of the eighteenth century, was caught from the fo’c’s’le 
head through marine glasses. 

After seven days at sea the first landfall was awaited 
with eager anticipation. As the blur of cloudland lifted 
out from the bosom of the sea and lightened, till we could 
see points and gleams of pale yellow, and in time gave 
hints of terraced lands which held the vineyards, it required 
little of the romance of that sea and that latitude to picture 
Madeira as a jeweled island. Soon, under deadened head¬ 
way, with the slow majesty of a mighty steamship the giant 
Cleveland made ready to drop her anchor. 

From the rail the passengers saw an island of bold 
precipices and sheer heights, some at times blurred by a 
fleeting cloud; of green smothered rocks and seamed 
ravines; of riotous vineyards; of the lovely fronded palm, 
slim and graceful; of canyon-like streets bounded by walls 
of white; of red-tiled roofs; of green gardens blazing with 
unfamiliar blooms,— a port adorned with the half-barbaric 
botany of an isle in sub-tropical waters. They saw one of 
the jeweled paradises of the ocean, a spot where fond and 
partial Mother Nature has lavished with a hand tremulous 
with yearning the most beautiful of her gifts, where she has 
married the philosophy of the north to the passion of the 
3 


32 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

south. The view is not unlike that which a voyager to 
Glasgow sees when he sights the bold coast of the north of 
Ireland above Foreland, saving that Madeira shows far 
more foliage and is far more precipitous. 

In later days the tourists viewed earthly paradises where 
nature had done her utmost to console man for the loss of 
Eden. In all of the wonderful trip they saw but three to 
equal, possibly to excel, Madeira — the wondrous Bay of 
Naples, the interior of green Ceylon, and the country back 
of Honolulu. 

Those who have seen the public gardens of Halifax in 



June, may find those bowers distanced in Funchal. Those 
who have admired the quaint architecture of St. Augustine 
or Mexico, will find that architecture vivified here. And 






AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


33 


the sheer heights which rise to Edinburgh Castle are 
matched, surpassed, more than once here in Funchal. 

As Herr Kruse, first officer, issued his first order from 
the fo’c’s’le head to the brawny sailors at the anchor cable 
a lubberly yawl, broad of beam, high of freeboard, stout 
of thwarts, built on the lines of an apple-woman, came 
bobbing like a tub toward the ship. A lusty Portugee w T as 
at the oar and a thin lad, all hands and feet, was balancing 
in the stern sheets. At first we surmised that the youngster 
was claiming the privilege of the tropics; he seemed to be 
in the altogether. In a few moments though it was 
revealed that he had made a graceful concession to conven¬ 
tion, and was wearing a pair of passe linen tights, long since 
reduced to a state of syncope. 

Never before had I believed that one pair of Portuguese 
lungs could make air vibrant to the extent that this lad 
made it. 

“ Heveindar, jintilmin!” he exclaimed, crescendo of 
voice and staccato of movement, pointing to the water. 

For a moment I was in two minds. It might be 
Portugee, but a mixture of philology and common sense, the 
latter of which I am seldom accused of, solved the problem. 
Yes, “ heave ” is a sailor’s word the wide world over, 
Madeira, Southampton, New York, or Oceanica. “ Dar ” 
is as near as a self-respecting Portugee can fairly be 
expected to train toward “there.” And so the war-whoop 
was an invitation for the tourist gentry to cast coins into 
the liquid indigo, wdiereupon the lad would give an exhibi¬ 
tion of the Madeira dive and recapture the coins midway 
between the top and the bottom of the sea. 

A gentleman from Chicago (jintilmin from Chicago 
have a prescriptive right to their own idea of practical 
humor) was heavy laden with divers small discs of polished 
brass conceived as a method of information about a certain 
patent medicine, and milled and stamped with eagles and at 
a distance, simulating gold pieces. With the mien of 
Haroun tossing a gold purse to a servitor, the jintilmin from 


34 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


Chicago dropped a disc into the sea. The contribution fell 
on its flat side and oscillated in the water. In a jiffy the 
urchin was overside and en route towards the bit of brass. 
His body could be followed as vigorous strokes sent it at 
a depth of some five or six feet toward the oscillating goal. 
In less than a minute the metal was discernible gleaming 
between the urchin’s teeth, as the swarthy lad clambered 
back over what Mike calls the gunwhale. 

In the few moments which were occupied by this intro¬ 
duction a flotilla of yawls was racing from the water front 
toward the ship. As the order came which released the 
anchor, the foremost neared the landward side of the ship 
and the “ Heveindar, jintilmin ” slogan resounded. Fat, 
lubberly yawls they were, apple-women, some of the roly- 
poly type and Dolly Vardens the others. In each boat was a 
Portugee lad, fit as a fiddle for diving, not an ounce of 
adipose; biceps and leg muscles trained to the minute, 
looking the part as the blue and crimson tipped oar blades 
look the part at Gales Ferry or in New London Harbor on 
June mornings. From that time till the ship weighed 
anchor the slogan came pealing up the side and many a pint 
of silver and nickel coin dropped into the deep. A statis¬ 
tician estimates that five or six quarts of Liberty heads 
found haven in those yawls. To measure that largess by the 
quart, is not entirely unoriginal. 

Next it was to the tenders. If the yawls were lubberly, 
the craft which came out to the Cleveland to take her 
passengers ashore were in symphony with them. Think of 
a houseboat razee’d down to a power craft and you’d have 
a picture of one of the tender flotilla. 

While the tenders lay off the quarter, awaiting the 
opening of the gangway gate, the passengers massed on the 
forecastle and in the forward passages. Little Joe was in 
the thick of the throng. A portly dowager, broad of beam, 
middle-aged, and duplicated of chin, trod on one of his 
feet. An elderly financial terror with a name of magic in 
his home city in Ohio trod on the other. They and other 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


35 


grown-ups all around the little fellow shut out air 
and light. 

Soon the welcome time came when the gate was opened 
and the mass started for the gangway. It was an American 
crowd, remember, and with a moiety from the Middle West. 
What marvel that the evolution into a wild scramble 
occupied barely two minutes? It was the grandfather of 
a quarter of a hundred of wild scrambles which occurred 
at landings and hotels and temples ere the trip passed into 
history. 

Two points “ featured ” the Cleveland scramble off 
Funchal; one, the genesis of the phenomenon, and two, the 
name which Little Joe gave to the phenomenon. The latter 
reached print on the other side of the world. It tickled the 
Manila Times and The South China Times and The 
Pacific Advertiser . Who shall say that the little lad has not 
achieved fame or had fame thrust upon him? 

But as I was starting to say before, I went afield with 
the Manila Times , the name given by Joe to the phenomenon 
at the Funchal was the “ gee whiz.” Can seven letters 
better paint the picture? 

Once down the gangway steps and on the tender the 
run over to the old stone landing consumed scarcely four 
minutes, a time well devoted to a glance at the panorama of 
the dear old forgotten seaport. 

The water stretched in deep indigo close to the shore 
and then lapped on a narrow strip of stone-studded beach. 
Instead of sand it was stones, stones which met the eye, 
black polished stones, two or three sizes larger than a girl’s 
fist. Back from the high landing an avenue of noble trees 
resembling our sycamores led toward an open square. 
Beyond, white walls, stucco, and roofs tiled in terra cotta 
or canary glistened in a smother of green and flowering 
vines, above which palms reached feathery fronds against a 
sky fleeced with cottonlike clouds. High above the city the 
sky-line was chiseled in rock. 

It was a fairy city which lay before the visitors, genial 


36 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


sunshines and grateful shadow, quaint faces and strange toy- 
sleds drawn by little beasts, tiny houses nestling like tinted 
shells beneath palms and toy shops, neat and cool. 

But as to the sleds; that is the first story. The power 
is from the muscle of island oxen. The chariot is a tiny 
box overarched by a canopy or a similar top in half the hues 
of the rainbow. The driver is a saturnine islander with a 
whip in one hand and a well greased cloth over his arm. 
Such is the carro combination; carro, with toy stage coach 
for father and sleigh for mother. 

Back in old days on a New England farm I was trained 
to journey on the nigh side when navigating a yoke of oxen, 
but on Madeira the pilot travels on the off. Things seem 
to go by opposites in this forgotten port, or at least the 
driver of carro No. 62 seemed to go by opposites. When, 
to indicate my wish to travel “ around ” the town, I, using 
the sign language, whirled my hand like a pin-wheel on the 
Fourth of July, El Capitan of carro No. 62 gravely grunted 
and in a trice was saying some bad words in Portugee to a 
tiny tad, who pulled with might and main at a laniard 
thing depending from the starboard animal’s starboard horn, 
and ere I comprehended what was in store the captain was 
hauling on the port quarter of the sled and the chariot was 
coming about. In another moment we had reversed and 
were assaulting Funchal from the west, while a hundred and 
more of carros were exploring the city from the east. This 
was my introduction to the sign-language. 

Along the water front and over stones carried a ceatury 
and more ago from the beach to the street, we rode. Then 
it was up into the side hill city and along a canyon called a 
driveway. Palms rose high overhead. We were in cool 
shade, like the shadow of a great rock in a dry land. 

Not all the curiosity was on our side. From behind the 
jalousie of a piazza which jutted out from the second story 
of a spotless house I saw a lovely Portuguese girl, a beauty 
with raven hair and midnight eyes, olive complexion, face 
of oval contour, and a cameo figure. She was a dream in 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


37 


the dark, hidden by the matting and the mass of flower¬ 
ing vine. 

Some of the streets in rock-cut Funchal are barely larger 
than lanes, barely wider than the pathways which we later 
traversed in Canton, where a thoroughfare of more than six 
and one-half feet is a novelty. But, unlike the streets in 
Canton, the lanes here are ways of beauty, winding often 
by the feet of rock, it is true, but with glorious lace-flecked 
sky and plumy fronds overhead and waving green and 
brilliant scarlet blooms and lavish bougainvillea on one or 
both sides. 

It was not long before we fell in with some of the 
carros which had been traversing Funchal in the regulation 
circuit. Then it was El Capitan and the tiny tad to one side 
of the canyon while the string passed by with many sup¬ 
posedly bad words in vigorous Portugee. 

“Did you see the Columbus tablet?” a lovely lady 
called out as her carro skidded and slewed by and perspira¬ 
tion studded the brow of the swarthy Phaeton who guided it. 

Later, it developed that a tablet was supposed to exist 
in the city commemorating the Genoan, who is declared in 
local tradition to have found in Madeira the girl who con¬ 
sented to become his wife. That Columbus once lived in 
Funchal is authentic, and that he could have found a girl 
beautiful enough to meet the ideal of beauty of even an 
Italian, is easily believable. You believe in beauty while 
you are under Madeira’s thrall. And that reminds me of 
a story which a lady at our table calls “ cute.” 

In the shade of a clump of palms a young husband from 
the ship and his dearest were strolling. 

“ Henry, dear, how do you pronounce the name of this 
charming island ? ” the lady inquired. 

“ This, Dorothy,” the gentleman answered with enjoy¬ 
ment, “ is ‘ Mah-Dearie.’ ” 

But to return to our carro and the canyon. Out 
in the cool cut and up a sunlit hill to a halt by 
the side of a private garden. There El Capitan by 


38 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

virtue of that which distinguished his oxen, “ drag,” 
gained for us a moment’s admission to the tiny patch 
of neatly bordered walks and brilliant flowers. Next 
the ride was resumed, and in the seats of the carro we 
passed quintas smothered in foliage and lying in the shade 
of royal palms. At one point we paused to scan the view of 
the harbor, rich deep indigo to the horizon, the same dark 
indigo which old Zargo sailed four centuries agone. We 
passed by the Roman Catholic cathedral and the English 
church. Also we passed shops and tarried to exchange 
English silver for Madeira goods. And finally we disem¬ 
barked in the shade opposite the Public Garden. Then it 
was to step over to the wide piazza of the hotel. There on 
wicker chairs we watched the human comedy of old Funchal. 
Portuguese soldiers in some kind of khaki and with queer 
caps of zouave family crossed with Deutschland passed and 
repassed. They looked fit, said a comrade of the Grand 
Army of the Republic. They looked like scrappers, said a 
young man of the day from New York City. Their rifles 
were some species of Krags. A detail of about twenty 
marched by at- the old-fashioned “ carry,” turning the mind 
back to those dear salad days of blessed memory when the 
rattle of the drum was the most stirring music in life. The 
dark Portugee sons of Mars swung by with a business-like 
swagger and for the moment all eyes were on them. 

On the piazza of the hotel we sat while a desultory 
stream drifted by. You saw Englishmen in thin gray suits 
and silk shirts with soft collars and silk ties with pearl stick¬ 
pins of new and wonderful vintage, who lounged by with that 
meek and modest mien which distinguishes young Englishmen 
the wide world over. Island lasses silently stole past with 
barely a glance out of the corner of a discreet eye. Portuguese 
men paced along with but a moiety of interest in us, as far as a 
hasty observer saw. It was a fascinating show to view for 
a half hour. 

Then it was time to step over to the west gate of the 
Public Garden and on to the Methodist chapel. Thirty- 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


39 


one years before the Reverend William G. Smart had 
started a mission on the island. He had found followers, 
and now there were three stations among the islands. 

The chapel was small, simple, and plain, the congrega¬ 
tion was devout. The furniture was of Calvinistic severity. 
Along one wall was painted: 

“ Jesus Disse, Eu Sou a Luz do Mundo.” 

It was a hymn which opened the substantial part of the 
service. The words were sung in Portuguese, the American 
visitors humming the air. The Reverend Doctor Francis E. 
Clark, founder of the Christian Endeavor Society, sat on 
the platform with the Reverend Mr. Smart and the two 
other Methodist clergymen, the Reverend George B. Nied 
and the Reverend B. R. Duarte of the Wesleyan Mission 
Stations in the Madeiras. With Dr. Clark sat William 
Shaw of Boston, general secretary of the World’s Christian 
Endeavor Society, and Hiram N. Lathrop of Boston, inter¬ 
national treasurer. 

Each of these three made a short address in English, 
speaking a sentence at a time and pausing while Mr. Smart 
translated it into the native tongue. Somehow the scene 
suggested the old-time hymn in the remote country 
Congregational Churches of the long ago, when the minister 
lined out a hymn and the congregation sang a line at a time. 

It was a strange gathering there in forgotten Funchal, 
Protestants of five or six denominations from over a dozen 
states and olive-hued islanders who had left the ancient 
faith of their forebears. 

In company with some of the young people, Pauline 
went in the afternoon to the station and then up the 
funicular and on to the summit of the mountain, said to be 
nearly five thousand feet above the sea. The young people 
went down a good deal faster, than they ascended. The 
descent from Avernus, a coast of two miles, was in a carro. 
It was a good substitute for the gee whiz. It was a coast 
of nearly two miles. Little Joe has a fond memory of 


40 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


shooting the chutes at Piney Ridge Park, a trolley resort 
near his home, and he inquired of Big Sister whether the 
descent was as exciting. It was all of that and more too, 
Big Sister said, and she ought to know. 

Returning to the hotel, Pauline found even her mother 
sipping Madeira wine, and comfortably regarding the 
passing show with delicious languor. Pauline sat her down 
and wrote to a little school friend. She had a high opinion 
of Funchal and she likened the port to the Jasper City. 

Amid the green branches of the Public Gardens the blue 
and white Portuguese flag was flaunting. It is a flag that is 
disappointing or picturesque, according to the view-point of 
the beholder. It is handsome at close range when the crown 
in the center can be discerned, but blurry at a distance at 
sea. We are told that numbers of the islanders had little 
love for the crown. We heard, too, that many of them 
held our Old Glory in respect and admiration. 

A short stroll led us to a little private garden and we 
had opportunity to see the tiny paradise within the garden 
gates. A jaunty walk, lined out with black stones from the 
strand, curved by a chattering rill which danced blithely 
toward a fountain. It passed a latticed arbor, islanded in 
flowers of queenly purple. It skirted a tiny jungle of 
sugar cane and terminated in a clump of orange trees, where 
from a perch in a gay cage a lordly parrot swore in lusty 
Portugee. Had you been there you might have peered 
around in not grotesque apprehension to discern fig leaves 
and an apple tree and Mother Eve. 

Too soon came the hour for the return to the ship. 
Tourists went down to the stone landing laden with fruits 
and laces, flags and post-cards, photographs and straw hats, 
and even chairs. They embarked on the tenders, and happy 
and tired, but jubilant, sailed back to the Cleveland. They 
climbed the gangway steps and from the fo’c’sle and the 
nearer rail gazed back at the shore. A thin mist passed 
over the city just long enough to dim the sun. For a few 
fleeting moments a double rainbow arched through the sky 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


41 


from its pot of gold somewhere far up in the mountain¬ 
side to a point out in the dark indigo. 

I have many a golden Sunday in the album of memory, 
but not one surpasses the day spent ashore in quaint, dreamy 
Funchal, forgotten of modern travel, beautiful Funchal, 
relic of centuries long since laid to rest in lavender and cedar. 



CHAPTER III. 


THE TRAVELERS’ CLUB. 


M ADEIRA astern, the ship churned her way 
toward the Moroccan coast, or rather the 
Pillar of Hercules. 

The morning after Funchal saw (and heard) 
the Travelers’ Club, an institution destined to grow in favor 
till the equator was reached, when nothing but ice-cream 
grew in favor. Of course, it was the faithful forward 



Courtesy of F. C. Clark. 

THE FAITHFUL FORWARD DINING-ROOM 


dining-room which beheld the genesis of the club, the chief 
chaperon launching the child into the Cleveland world. 
Information solid and information tenuous, criticism correct 











AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


43 


and criticism nebulous, praise and opinions, were given by 
passengers from the depths of their knowledge or from the 
fervor of admiration, more especially the fervor, for, 
as previously observed, little about Funchal actually inform¬ 
ing, seems to have tunneled into popular print. 

One raconteur told the story about the pronunciation 
of Madeira and immediately became a success, such as a 
romantic actor becomes with matinee girls. A good clergy¬ 
man described a visit in a private garden which he described 
in the impressionist style. He went on to say that he almost 
caught himself looking around to find an apple tree and a 
serpent, “ for,” said he, “ it was a fine substitute for the 
First Garden.” 

It was brought out that the population of Funchal, 
July 2, 1909, was figured at 39,000 and that of the 
Madeiras at about 140,000, that a tax of fifteen dollars a 
head was imposed on emigrants, and that numbers of the 
tourists had been pestered by little girls who begged for 
money. It was stated that it was in 1419 that Zargo dis¬ 
covered Madeira; also that the last shot of the American 
Revolution was fired near Madeira by an American war¬ 
ship whose captain did not know that the war had con¬ 
cluded, a boat in answer to the shot pulling out with a flag 
of truce and informing the commander about the treaty. 

Some of the speakers marveled at the pavement on the 
colonnaded street which leads from the square past the 
hotel to the landing. This pavement is made of black 
stones, taken from the beach where for centuries lapping 
waves have been polishing them and set upright in the soil 
in simple geometric figures. 

Another told of a walk up a steep side hill where terraces 
banked in little plats planted with fruit, sugar cane, and 
grapes. 

For well over three-quarters of an hour travelers’ tales 
floated across the faithful forward dining-room and then a 
perturbed steward showed a signal of distress. It was high 


44 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


time to lay table linen and spread mess gear, consequently 
the Travelers’ Club adjourned. 

“ Der kleine Knabe ist See krank.” 

The next morning Little Joe made less display of ginger 
than at any time since leaving New York. A heavy cross¬ 
sea was running. He was unenthusiastic. Yes, when the 
ship’s band began to play he neglected his favorite position, 
which he attains by squirming, on a shroud, from which he 
holds a hand in front of the flare of the trombone to feel 
the emerging music. He drooped. Next he observed that 
he was sorry that he was going around the world. Then 
he said he felt sick. Right after that came an act which 
was that convincing that any judge of the superior court 
would accept it as conclusive. At that moment the big 
quartermaster with a complexion like a tea rose came aft 
and gazed. 

“Der kleine Knabe!” he exclaimed, all compassion, 
“ der kleine Knabe ist See krank.” 

I do not vouch for the German. It is as Blucher, our 
table steward, wrote it on a menu card with much labor 
in German strokes and slants which are as gall and worm¬ 
wood to a man from Yankeedom. 

And, by the way, German is a noble and majestic lan¬ 
guage, but it has its faults. Why does it call a bath “ bad ”? 
Still it is a language consoling to men on the war-path. For 
instance it styles women “ dammen.” 

The thoroughbred traveler on salt water, the real thing, 
a man who has observed as well as breathed, and who has 
a born fondness for the sea, is one of the noblest works of 
God. A wooden decoy thoroughbred — it would exhaust 
all the roots of the dead languages to lambast him ade¬ 
quately. A story about such a one was told in the smoking- 
room just before we sighted the Moroccan coast. 

He was a dear old puddinghead, so the yarn goes, who 
came to the ship the afternoon before she sailed. He had 
puffy bags under his eyes, a chin in duplicate, and a cor- 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


45 


poration, the yarnsmith chortled as he said this, “ like a 
quarter keg.” All over his pie-crust face and apoplectic 
neck was written the tale that he was, as bon vivants would 
say, good to himself. He told, and no doubt correctly, 
that he had gone along the Mediterranean twice and had 
crossed the Atlantic four times. 

“ So you are getting to be almost a globe-trotter, uncle,” 
a young man said to him. 

As the story runs the dear old fellow responded, 
complacently: 

“Yes, I flatter myself I know something about the 
ocean.” 

The next moment he observed: 

“Excuse me; I must be going downstairs to Henry’s 
stateroom in the rear part of the boat.” 

This from a man who was a near globe-trotter, a 
thoroughbred on the ocean. “ Downstairs ” to the “ rear 
part ” of the “ boat ”! In the bar sinister is more thorough¬ 
bred, than in the deal old puddinghead. 

The Moroccan coast has a charm all its own; more 
than a charm, a splendor. It is a land which lends itself to 
the glory of sunrise, the wonder of the brilliant lighter 
lines of canary and gold showered about rock outlines and 
village and hilltop towers. Here was the land of the 
Moors; to the north was the land of Manana. Here old 
tales of magic and scimiters and the red flag; there the 
land of wine and the olive. 

Inshore, toward beetling crags or peaceful slopes we 
saw Xebecs and picturesque felluccas. In procession, 
almost, they passed, and in barely more than an hour we 
were swinging by Ceuta, the African Pillar, and then the 
Rock, its mate on the other side, began to loom. 

We saw the blue waters which floated Villeneuve and 
Nelson and engulfed Napoleon’s sea strategy, waters which 
met our own eyes with the message of peace. The fancy 
could range back to that early year in the nineteenth cen- 


46 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

tury when Villeneuve with the combined fleets of France 
and Spain joined battle with the erstwhile cabin boy. A 
sailor might picture in his mind the stately craft with 
clouds of canvas which dotted the Bay of Trafalgar. His 
mind might draw the giant ships of the line, with bank 
upon bank of guns and with their high freeboard. He 
could paint the smart frigates and the swift brigs. He could 
see black hulls, open ports, and frowning muzzles; then 
the yellow stab of flame, the whitish-gray smoke, and the 
deep, sullen boom. He might fancy the one-armed admiral 
in full uniform and view the muskets of the French marine 
which sent Horatio Nelson to the deck. 

But by this time Tarifa calls for attention, Tarifa which 
was grandmother of Barbary pirates even at a time when 
Britain ruled the wave, as the eagle ruled the air. 

Now it is glorious Gibraltar which holds us in thrall, 
the crouching lion with outspread paw which guards the 
western inlet of the Mediterranean; eye and muzzle and 
paw pointing to Africa and the beast’s lean barrel looming 
behind the mane. 

In massive majesty the Rock rivals, outstrips Madeira, 
but it is the majesty of a queen of tragedy unrelieved by 
winsomeness. 

As we drew in, English men-o’-warsmen were at target 
practice in the lee of the Rock. It seemed as if it were a 
kin of sub-caliber practice; at any rate the reports were 
not alarming. One of our tourists, a kindly soul from an 
inland town in the Middle West, traveling on salt water 
for the first time, said: 

“Ain’t that nice? To think of English sailors saluting 
an American boat! ” 

This delightful old fellow was most assuredly compact. 
Compute the little divergencies in that short speech. Let 
it pass, as well it may, that the men-o’-warsmen were 
English instead of the safer word “ British,” and that they 
were clothed in the generic mantle of “ sailor.” But the 
fancy likes to smile at the refreshing thought of men-o’- 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 47 

warsmen saluting a merchant ship, and at the moment the 
black, white, and red of the German was floating from the 
“ American.” And it is stimulating to hear an eighteen 
thousand ton steamship called a " boat.” 

Somehow the genial old soul reminded me of the 
wooden decoy thoroughbred who went “ downstairs,” and 
of the comment of the purser, who conjectured whether the 
thoroughbred would bring up in the basement. 

Soon we were on a tender approaching the landing. Off 
Funchal our dear wives had been impressed by the beauty 
of the port. Here was less beauty, and perhaps it was for 
that reason that anticipation directed itself toward shopping. 

The landing was a sun-seamed quay, across which we 
were whirled, leaves in the storm, in the gee whiz to a line 
of victorias. Into the first empty one piled we, Pretty 
Mamma, Pauline, and Little Joe. In a jiffy Joe was 
clamoring for a place on the driver’s seat, where his legs 
dangled as we made a tour of inspection. 

Travelers from America are, many of them, familiar 
with Gibraltar, and it is far from my intention to describe 
places in a highway of American travel. Suffice it to say 
that in the course of the victoria’s jaunt we turned our 
eyes on the monument to Eliott, the gardens, and the 
giant dry dock. We saw a giant gun, masked, painted to 
simulate rock and moss. We saw swarthy Moors in 
burnoose and flowing costume. We saw and heard and 
endured peddlers a plenty. We saw laden donkeys and the 
cement rain-shed. 

Much more we saw, but for a port like Gibraltar are 
there not guide-books, and are they not as accurate as I am? 

One thing I saw, not in the guide-book, Little Joe in 
trouble. My liveliest recollection of the Rock does not 
center about the tunnels or Eliott’s bronze or the Malaga 
grapes. It is fastened upon Little Joe, who lost a well-nigh 
indispensable button when we were promenading the main 
street. Necessity became the mother of invention. 

4 


48 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

Another memory deals with an entry in Pauline’s diary, 
in which it is recorded: 

“ The Rock is seven miles in circumference, is fourteen 
hundred and seventy miles high, and has seventy miles of 
roadway.” 

Pauline is touchy when the matter of the height of the 
Rock is broached in home conversation. 

Still another memory deals with a captain of trade, 



IN GIBRALTAR 


who desired to exchange a sandalwood fan for six of 
Pretty Mamma’s shillings. As the lady resumed her stroll 
he intimated that he would be satisfied with five shillings. 
When there was no meeting of minds, the captain of trade 
showed that it would ruin him, still he might sell the fan 
for four. Three shillings were extended and the fan came 






AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


49 


our way in a jiffy. As we were returning on a tender, 
Pretty Mamma saw a lady with the fan’s twin. As women- 
will, the two daughters of Eve talked of shopping, and it was 
developed that the twin was purchased for just one shilling. 

Away from the Rock and on to Naples. 

On the evening before our landing the chief chaperon 
lectured on La Bella Napoli. And such a lecture! Think 
pf Stoddard and Burton Holmes at their best and add 
Lafcadio Hearn, transmuted to the platform, and Ruskin 
and you may have an idea of the beauty and the romance of 
Naples as told in glowing eulogy, paid with the utmost 
charm of description and voice. 

In the morning the ship stood up the Bay, Capri on 
one hand, Ischia on the other. In the fresh morning light 
the view was one of surpassing loveliness, with drowsing 
but truculent old Vesuvius in the background — and yet, and 
yet — perhaps, after that splendid lecture, anticipation was 
too high, — and yet Madeira was more than its equal. 

To many American travelers the Via Caraccioli is nearly 
as familiar as Broadway, and so Naples is not for this 
volume. And still it may be said that it is not the Naples 
of ten years ago. Changed from its old estate, the 
Neapolitan water-front is clean, yes, more, is immaculate. 
Contrast it with Fulton Market, Water, and South Streets 
in our own New York. 

In the forenoon a ride in a victoria along the water-side 
and by the statues of Kings of Naples. In the afternoon it 
was a ride to a church, where we were warned to beware of 
pickpockets! Then we went to the Galleria Umberto, 
where we saw close to two-score Venuses or Veneres 
(whichever plural you select) in but one or two costumes, 
but of seven or eight centuries. 

As I stood before a Venus of Century No. 15, a clatter 
was heard. A swarm of small-sized jackies in a blue service 
uniform came trooping in. I caught a fair glimpse at the 
cap ribbon of one and read: “ Gaulois.” 

What attraction had a Venus of the fifteenth century 


50 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


compared with a liberty party of French jackies from 
batteaux in the Bay? Mille Tonnerre! Parbleu! Name 
of a thousand names! It was to fraternize, and so in a 
French not entirely execrable I addressed a jacky. 

It was then that I had reason to bless my staunch friend 
in the Homeland, M. le Capitaine Curtiss, who had with 
charity conversed with me in his perfect Parisian before I 
left New York. Thanks to the good captain, I could lead 
the Breton jackie to understand. Yes, well, invariably he 
smiled with pleasure at the French of the accomplished 
Captain Curtiss and appeared to be filled with a certain 
astonishment and delight and smiled often as he listened, 
and once more I blessed the good boulevardier, the 
Captain Curtiss. 

But it was when he began to talk that I was “ up 
against it,” in the patois, not abominable of all the world 
American. He traveled at a twenty-two clip. 

“ Repetez,” said I, “ Repetez, mot par mot.” But when 
he repeated it was not word by word. It was at a gait 
furious and involved. It was with difficulty that I learned 
that he was haranguing me in a small oration. When 
“ les deux Republiques ” and “ nous sommes amis, monsieur ” 
were distinguishable with “ fraternite ” I caught a clew. 

I could see that the party was from the battleships 
Gaulois, Saint Louis, and Charlemagne. The uniform 
resembled the blue service uniform of the United States 
Navy, except that the collar was double. The flat caps 
were small compared with those in the American Navy; 
indeed they were not much larger than the yellow forage 
caps of King George’s cavalry, and those are barely larger 
than fried eggs. 

In the meantime the family was threading the gallery, 
or was embayed in some distant alcove. For several minutes 
I explored and found that, despairing of my reappearing, 
Pretty Mamma had marshaled her brood and had been 
driven in the victoria toward the Aquarium. 

The family was beyond my horizon. As fortune had 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 51 

evidently ranged me alongside the sons of the tri-color, I 
voyaged with the Frenchman with a gay heart. I observed 
that the service stripes and the watch marks on the men’s 
sleeves appeared to correspond in a degree to those in use 
in the United States Navy. As for rating badges there 
was a deep mystery. The anchor was large and single, not 
crossed, and it was stitched in scarlet. 

At the gallery entrance we parted, I turning toward the 
water-front and the liberty party toward the Aquarium. 
Using French, what little Italian I knew, and English, I, 
a stranger in a strange city, worked my way back to the 
dock and rejoined the family. 

Evening was shutting down as the Cleveland cast off. 
Boatmen alongside and boys on the stringpiece began to 
sing the Santa Lucia. A voyager at the rail told the old 



ON THE BOAT DECK 




52 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


legend as the barcarole rose. The ship’s band crashed out 
with a German air. 

We sat on the quarter and saw the lights recede. And 
later old Vesuvius lay far away in the dark, nocturnal 
purple, a darker shapeless mass. 

Sunrise found us nearing the Toe of Italy. Before mid¬ 
morning we were in the Strait of Messina. Fresh from the 
/Eneid, Pauline told us about Charybdis and Scylla. One 
of the ship’s officers pointed out the rock and the 
“ whirlpool.” 

Off Messina the ship deadened way. From the star¬ 
board rails and from the hurricane deck passengers trained 
glasses on the ruins, and for over a quarter of an hour the 
vessel lay abreast of the stricken city. The distant spray 
could be seen as it dashed high above the solid sea-wall. 
Ruined dwellings and debris were visible and some of the 
efforts at rebuilding could be made out. 

On the other side of the strait Reggio was soon viewed, 
with its evidences of the dread visitation. Then the 
Cleveland steamed away from the Calabrian coast and Sicily. 

When the next meeting of the Travelers’ Club came a 
passenger told about meeting a shipmate, a young girl, in 
front of the cemetery in Gibraltar in which headstones mark 
the last resting places of English officers, mortally wounded 
in Nelson’s fight, who died in the hospital in the shade of 
the Rock. He told about seeing her in a jaunty sailor 
blouse and went on to explain that her sailor collar, with its 
three braids of white, was modeled on the British naval 
collar and that the stripes spelled Nelson’s three great vic¬ 
tories, the Battle of the Nile, that of Copenhagen, and that 
of Trafalgar. The neckerchief which the young girl wore, 
he pointed out, was on the model of the neckerchief ordered 
by the admiralty to be worn by British men-o’-warsmen, 
after Trafalgar, as a mark of mourning for the brave 
Nelson. 

The speaker was cordially applauded. Stimulated by 
the applause, he went afield in Naples and told the club of 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 53 

his pleasure in finding the water-front clean. He likened 
the water-side to Spotless Town and journeyed on to declare 
that the worst street there was cleaner, than the cleanest 
near Fulton Market in New York City. For that declara¬ 
tion he was rewarded with murmurs. New Yorkers who 
at home were unsparing of criticism of city fathers 
developed a civic pride which is now among their cruise 
assets. 


CHAPTER IV. 

WHERE WEST JOINS EAST. 


I T was in mist and murk that our ship steamed at night 
on her course far south of the old Greek archipelago, 
but when, the next morning, she lifted the De Lesseps 
statue at the breakwater of Port Said from the level 
of the Mediterranean the sun was shining bright and the 
air was clear. It needed a pleasing picture on the water 
to reconcile us to the contemplation of the dirty, low-lying 
town, a queer, straggling, higgledy-piggledy place where 
dusted squalor reigns. 

The villain of the English stage elects to hail from Port 
Said. We can well comprehend his choice. Dirtiness is 
next to deviltry; therefore the men here are near-devils, 
villains; quod erat demonstrandum. 

The ship anchored and we went ashore in scows, walking 
a cable’s length to the Egyptian State railroad station. We 
were in a town of fifty thousand people, at the north 
terminus of the Suez Canal, about one-fifth of whom are 
Europeans; four-fifths East, one-fifth West. It might be 
said that West joins East here. The West is at its worst 
and the East is at its sloppiest. 

To the merger the West brings canned meat, coal 
carrying, and the Standard Oil Company; also rum and 
whiskey. The East brings raucous ill temper and thirst. 
Both bring dirt. There is bustle, for Arabs are coaling 
ships and money changers are scalping tourists, and fruit 
and post-card hawkers are hawking, and peddlers are 
peddling, and any Arab around is after bakhsheesh. Sand 
and heat and noise are training with the dirt. Travelers 
have told us that pure, unadulterated wickedness is the 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


55 


town’s trait. We can easily believe the town to be in the 
same class with the Barbary Coast of the ante-earthquake 
San Francisco at its worst. 

From the station our two special trains drew us out by 
clumps of brilliant palms above dirt and tin cans. A few 
minutes pulled the trains into a stretch of biscuit-colored 
sand and ere long we were gazing at the - monotone of 
the desert. 

Our backs were toward the canal and our faces toward 
Cairo. For uncounted hours we baked in the train com¬ 
partments, inhaling dust and attempting, after tiring of the 
biscuit glare, to doze. 

And so, dust on dust, through a sun-swept arid country, 
we drew into dusty Cairo. Half of the party went to 
Shepheard’s Hotel (where Roosevelt was a guest a few 
months later) and half to the Grand Continental; all then 
repaired to washing water and fought the good fight with 
sand and dust. 

Time remained for a view, from balcony or piazza or 
window, of the passing Cairo comedy. 

Cairo is a hodge-podge city, where fezes top twice as 
many heads as do derbies and straw hats, where soldiers 
show three or four different kinds of rifles, where flat- 
bottomed carts are more common than both victorias and 
landaus, where water is sold from goat skins, where 
peripatetic lemonade vendors tout with ancient earthen 
jars, where Arabic stands off ten tongues, where pour boire 
gives way to bakhsheesh, where a fifth of the women and 
half of the men are barefooted, where three-quarters of the 
women are veiled with the ugly ashmut, and where half 
«of the streets are malodorous and sandy canyons and a 
quarter are majestic boulevards. 

Do you wish to see a human omelette, one-half comic 
opera and the other half circus? Sit on the wide piazza 
of the Continental and scrutinize the passing show as it 
mixes and disentangles beneath the splendid equestrian 
statue of Ibrahim Pasha on the Place Ezbekieh. 


56 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 



Before us are costumes from Sudan, from Araby the 
Blest, from Syria, from Armenia, from Turkey, from 
Greece, Italy, London, and New York. You may hear an 
Egyptian band play a Sousa march. As I stood in front 
of the hotel some street musicians played a weird Oriental 
air and as a chaser “ Love Me and the World is Mine.” 


IN CAIRO 

Immediately after the party’s arrival the president of 
its Masonic Club received an invitation to take a delega¬ 
tion to a meeting of Fruit of Justice Lodge which the grand 
secretary for Egypt was to attend. After dinner a Masonic 
contingent mustered on the piazza (that nearly slipped in 
as forecastle). Most of the Masons wore brilliant fezes. 
The party saw the third degree exemplified, and witnessed 
the use of both Bible and Koran. The “ work ” was 








AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 57 

almost entirely in Arabic. The president of the club 
received the thanks of the lodge for the visitors’ presence. 
His response was given sentence by sentence, as had been 
Dr. Clark’s address in the Methodist mission in Madeira, 


STREET IN CAIRO 

and at the end of each the words were translated into 
Arabic by a Syrian, who had been living in Providence, 
Rhode Island. 

Early in the evening I started out for a leisurely 
saunter in the streets of Cairo. In front of the terrace 
was a motley. Vendors were the backbone of the 




58 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


throng, some with post-cards, some with scarabs of out¬ 
rageous spuriousness, and some with necklaces. One per¬ 
sistent son of a burnt father had daggers. 

“ Buy dagger, jintleman! ” he begged, and for a reason 
he advanced: “ Can kill man.” I assured him that the only 
man I cared to kill was too far away, was in a newspaper 
office in Hartford, a man who talked too much. 

A stroll led me to a barber shop, and a badly needed 
shave. When the moment for paying arrived a debate 
arose. My gold was back in the hotel and the silver which 
I held out was English. The tonsorialist wished four 
piasters. Ele knew little of English and I nothing of 
Arabic. He would admit no money but Egyptian. He 
insisted that my shilling was less than four piasters, and, 
whatever it was, he would have none of it. As the debate 
was nearing a climax a Frenchman entered the shop. ' 

Again did I have good cause to bless my preserver, that 
accomplished boulevardier, M. le Capitaine Curtiss, who 
had with charity instructed me in the tongue of the 
Faubourg Saint Germain, or is it Sans German? The new 
comer could not restrain a smile of pleasure at hearing the 
French of the Faubourg Sans German. He begged my per¬ 
mission to use his Arabic to explain the finance to the 
tonsorialist, who accepted the shilling, forgetting to make 
change. 

It is not without reason that I thank the debonair 
Capitaine who has with me accomplished such miracles in 
the French language. 

One morning we occupied in seeing mosques, the chief 
of which was the splendid Mosque Mehemet Ali, built of 
white marble. Its approach is a spacious court paved with 
marble and surrounded with columns of alabaster. In the 
full brilliant sunlight the galleries and colonnades made a 
picture which I shall remember as long as I remember Cairo. 

From the dome is pendent a giant chandelier. A splen¬ 
did rug covers much of the floor space. In the dim and 
chastened light of the shadowy interior, with the vault 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


59 


rising to remote height, the effect is one of grandeur and 
solemnity. 

Proceeding to the right after leaving the mosque we 
reached a terrace terminating in a parapet. A panorama 
of Cairo lay below, a forest of minarets, spires, and bell 
turrets. The glaring white and the light dun of house- 
walls dimmed in the distance. On one side was the palace 
of Ibrahim Pasha with its giant green gardens and graceful 
palms. In the distance was the Nile, and in the far dis¬ 
tance the pyramid of Ghizeh. 

We visited the citadel, too; begun in 1166 and built 
of stones taken from the pyramids. We saw the entrance 
at which the Mamelukes were massacred by order of 
Mehemet Ali. 

The afternoon took us to the Egyptian museum, in 
which are stone sarcophagi dating from the first to the 
twenty-first dynasty. In the gallery of jewels were brace¬ 
lets, earrings, collars, finger rings, bands for legs and for 
ankles, mirrors, and silver vases. 

One morning carried us to the pyramids. The great 
peril now is the temptation to write a chapter about great 
stones. Once started, the temptation were hard to resist 
and wise is he who shuns the start. Still I wish to allude 
to the ginger and the success of that venturesome lady who 
ascended the great pryamid without loss of time, and took 
the last step as bravely, as the first. 

Egyptian women wear veils hung across the bridge of 
the nose and covering the lower part of the face and the 
neck. A black cloth rests gracefully on the hair, forming 
a band across the forehead and descending over the 
shoulders and the bust. A flowing black robe reaches to 
the ankles, which are as liberal as the feet. Between the 
eyes is a brass tube rigged with small spikes or pins. 

This strange garb at first appears grotesque to Western 
eyes, but soon it “ grows ” on you. The women are lithe 
and graceful and walk with a springy step. They have an 
easy and erect poise to head, neck, and shoulders. Of the 


60 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

face only the eyes are visible. There is mystery behind 
the veil, as if the women invited you to conjecture what 
manner of cheeks and lips were hidden. 

The graceful bearing of head and shoulders extends to 
the walk. Imagine, if you can, a New York woman 
graceful in a bathrobe, but fine down the robe and change 



“TAKING THE LAST STEP” 


it to black, and give the Gotham woman a springy walk, 
and she would be on the lines of her Cairene cousin. 

In the throng of pedestrians and loungers on the street 
the little Berber is noticeable. From his mother’s womb 
the toy boy is a beggar of beggars, a little lump of lazy sin. 
I shudder still at the tiny vagabond, importunate, tenacious, 
and very, very fresh. Were there anything in the doctrine 
of reincarnation he might be born as an English sparrow; 
he is that chipper and saucy. It would seem as if he sucked 
in the flavor of bakhsheesh with his mother’s milk. 

Out in the shadow of the great pyramids I had an 







AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


6 l 


exciting adventure with a couple of the gentry. Our sec¬ 
tion of the party found on arrival at the end of the avenue 
that the guides had multiplied their prices by two, on the 
ground that the section was large. To the multiplication 
we filed no demurrer. Our guide made mental note of 
this, as it subsequently developed, and when the time came 
to pay he again cheerfully multiplied by two, making the 
fee four times the ordinary amount. This was ascending 
a step too far in geometrical progression, and was met 
with a plump refusal. The Berber whistled and his call 
was responded to by a brother in sin. There was a spirited 
debate. The two sons of iniquity grew abusive, and I, 
losing temper, which was probably the best thing I could 
do, grabbed the extortioner by the throat. For a moment 
the two of them showed fight, but just then a cavalryman, 
who had been spurring his horse towards us, shouted. The 
Berberin subsided and was fain content with the price 
agreed upon, double the ordinary fee. 

Again we crossed the desert by train, this time from 
west to east. Suez was our destination, reached in five 
hours. Before the digging of the big ditch Suez was a 
somnolent village of Arab fishermen. It now has nearly 
twenty-two thousand population. It leaves commerce to 
Port Said and is a defender of Europe from contagious 
disease, prevalent in the Far East. 

In open scows we lightered to the Cleveland, which we 
found to be decorated with intertwined red, white, and blue 
and black, white, and red. A giant “Welcome” was 
burgeoning over the starboard gangway. It was like a 
home coming to tread again the ship’s deck and to see the 
honest Teutonic faces. We heard the story of the progress 
along the great ditch, how the ship’s draft was twenty- 
seven feet and how in several places the depth of water 
was barely twenty-nine feet. The ship was the largest 
which ever traversed the canal, her eighteen thousand tons 
being two thousand and more, than the biggest sister 
previous. And we thrilled a bit with the knowledge that 
we were making nautical history. 


CHAPTER V. 

TWO SEAS BEYOND SUEZ. 


O UR respect for the great ditch was increased on 
hearing that the canal toll for our ship was 
twenty-one thousand dollars, a year’s interest on 
half a million, information which came to my 
ears just as the propeller began to turn. The run before 
us was a miniature voyage of nine days, and three thousand 
miles, and was to lead us down the Red and across the 
Arabian Seas to Bombay. Pardon a sometime sailor if he 
chronicles it with excerpts from a diary not altogether 
unlike a log. 

First Day Out. Many of our good people were expect¬ 
ing a torrid and terrible time, but they were disappointed 
as to the mercury. It is most assuredly warm, but endur¬ 
able if you keep your head. The crew has shifted from the 
blue uniforms which were worn west of Port Said. They 
have broken out a light white duck like the “ whites ” 
used in the United States Navy, except that it is of better 
quality. The German sailors have a black neckerchief 
which is a first cousin, once removed, to the neckerchiefs 
which our jackies wear, but the knots look like a four-in- 
hand with the end doubled upward and secured with a 
small braid or dinky lanyard. The thing has a bob-tail 
effect, diametrically opposite to the swashbuckler flare of 
our jackies’ neckerchief when its ends are winged. 

A few moments after we got under way Little Joe came 
scampering aft, purple with exciting tidings. There was 
a swimming tank; it was on the port side, near the waist; 
could he go in with Russell? 

Yes, he could, after his mother broke out his bathing 
suit, which was in a trunk in the after hold. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 63 

“ Oh, Popper, not till then?” 

Who could disappoint the little fellow? So I granted 
to him a dispensation and allowed him to enter the pool in 
his pajama pants, or what a sailor might call a jury rig. 

By the way, our alarums and palpitations over Little 
Joe s safety are now minimizing. For the first few days I 
had followed the tiny tad all over the ship, from forecastle 
to poop, filled with solicitude when he went near the rail. 



Courtesy 0/ F. C. Clark. 

ON THE PROMENADE DECK 


Day after day has passed with never accident or danger in 
any guise. 

Cold soup was a welcome innovation on the menu card 
today, and Blucher received an order for it from every one 
at our table; it was mostly cold milk with vanilla and 
some very tenuous soup stock, tenuous and mysterious. 

This afternoon the P. and O.* steamship Mantua 
passed on our port hand, northward bound, sending a 
wireless, expressing good wishes to the American tourists. 


* Peninsular and Oriental, the giant line to the East. 

5 









6 4 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


Our ship responded in kind. Both messages were read in 
each dining-room this evening by a herald with lungs of 
leather. 

Second Day Out. The Red Sea is beginning to warm 
still more, and I deeply regret that second sentence in 
yesterday’s chronicle. 

Ladies are in open work, and very little even of that; 
men are in two-piece linen suits. Joe spent nearly half the 
morning in the swimming tank, which was shifted in the 
mid-watch last night to the starboard side of the fore¬ 
castle and stands in the lee of a protecting deck house in 
which a photographer has a dark room. Last summer Joe 
could swim barely three strokes, but he is full of ambition. 
One of the men is out with a search warrant for bathing 
trunks, and he contributed to the gayety of the bathers by 
appearing in the tank with a jersey and pajama pantaloons 
as his costume. The tank is of extra heavy canvas. The 
water is pumped twice a day from the sea and is nearly as 
vv^arm as the air. The first dive gives a mild shock, but the 
remainder of the swim is like paddling in the brook down 
in the pasture beyond the orchard. 

Awnings which were spread back on the Madeira Day 
are now reinforced by screen cloths. Sunny side and shady 
side, not alone of the promenade deck, but of all the decks 
which have rails, are thus protected. Windsails have been 
run up to capture the headway breeze and impound it for 
a spell below. Ice-tea is served twice a day on deck by 
canvas- or drill-jacketed stewards — half-backs of heaven! 

When we sailed from Madeira one fine mother in Israel 
was beginning to recover from nervous prostration, or 
rather an incipient neurasthenia. The tonic salt air, 
nature’s best specific for insomnia, and the change of scene 
completed the restoration. Now the question is: How will 
she and the Red Sea agree? 

This afternoon there appeared in each of the ship’s 
bulletin boards a notice announcing that ladies might 
arrange to sleep on the deck above the grill room, and men 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 65 

on the hatches in the waist. The glorious evangel was 
repeated at dinner to each sitting. As this evening begins 
to wear along, goddesses in kimonas and Chinese heelless 
slippers are flitting up from below decks with stewards or 
stewardesses in tow laden with cargoes of pillows, sheets,, 
and mattresses. Men in pajamas, enshrined in bathrobes,, 
are arranging bunks on the waist hatches. A ci-devant 
actor has retained a sailor to swing a ship’s hammock from 
awning beams. Dozens of the crew who are off watch are 
casting loose Hamburg steak snores from hammocks swung 
over the forecastle or from mattresses or blankets laid on 
the forecastle head planks. 

From cabins and passages below come floating up 
toward the Red Sea moon feminine substitutes for bad 
words, like: “ Did you ever? ” and “ Isn’t it just horrid? ” 

Third Day Out. Still more deeply do I regret that 
unfortunate second sentence under First Day Out. Yes, 
the Red Sea is the avenue to the portal of the ante-room 
of H—. 

It leaked out this morning that a dear old fellow who 
still talks about “ downstairs ” and the “ boat ” had a 
misadventure last night. After subsidizing his cabin 
steward to arrange mattress and sheets on the waist hatch 
cover he started alone for that destination. In some 
mysterious way he wandered by the grill room and up 
into the ladies’ laager. There was moment of mutual 
astonishment, and then he made his way “ downstairs.” 

All day long the mercury has been ascending. Accord¬ 
ing to stories told in the smoking-room it reached 92 
degrees Fahrenheit. This reading on a November day is 
new to most of the tourists; but it does not tell all of the 
tale. On either side of the sea is a desert of illimitable 
leagues, and there is a something about the air which 
scorches , we might allege. Little Joe has taken three swims 
in the pool today, and is happy. He is a hot favorite with 
“ Mike,” the steward who guards the tank. There is an 
infection in his glee, and an Ohio manufacturer who has 


66 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


benefited his fellow man by doing something in steel, and 
has acquired several hundred thousands by extending the 
benefit, confided to me today that he wished that he was 
back at the boy’s age. Joe is teaching a lesson and does not 
suspect it. He counts this journey gain, as otherwise, at 
home, he would be in Grade No. 2, and learning geography 
from a book. 

This afternoon we passed a succession of islets which a 
salamander from New York explained were known as The 
Twelve Apostles. In the hazy afternoon sunshine the tiny 
islands were indistinct, little more than cloudland banks 
in pastelle. 

A rumor spread among some of the maidens that the 
Southern Cross would be visible in the evening. One dear 
girl said that she had heard that it then could be seen over 
the port bow; she desired information as to where the 
“ port ” was. A 5'outh from New York was uncertain as 
to the port bow, but he enthusiastically volunteered to 
assist her in a hunt for the Southern Cross. I was cruel 
enough to make a trip of observation this evening, and can 
sign an affidavit that the young man sought for half an hour 
to find the Southern Cross in her eye and her hand. 

Thus ends this day. Wind, none; course, S. S. E., 
Yx E.; temperature, 82 degrees Fahrenheit; barometer, 
discreet. 

Fourth Day Out. This morning the ship slid through 
the Strait of Abdel-Mandeb and headed out into the 
Arabian Sea, dropping astern the rocky island which guards 
the gates between the two seas. We steamed by unin¬ 
habited islets, slim, pointed, and bare, which a tourist 
likened to “ stone icicles,” a simile which was refreshing, as 
any mention of ice might well be. We ran into a breeze, 
which, if not cool, was less heated than the Red Sea air. 
Deck stewards — blessed half-backs of Heaven! — served 
ice-water, ice-tea, and lemonade under the awnings. 

Distant cliffs were visible on the Arabian coast, “ purple 
peaks remote,” in a thin lavender haze beyond a sea of 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


67 


darkest indigo. Overhead there was never a fleck of float¬ 
ing cotton in all the sapphirine sky. From time to time 
came into view a beach on which surf broke in lines of 
cream. It may be sacrilege, but it is the belief of some of 
us that the sky here rivals the blue Italian sky, and that there 
are views here that may be mentioned along with those of the 
Bay of Naples. 

This evening heard a lecture by the head chaperon on 
Bombay and a talk on Agra and the Taj Mahal by the 
Reverend Doctor Francis E. Clark, the founder of the 
Christian Endeavor movement. These lectures are distinc¬ 
tive as well as informing. They afford instruction which a 
knight errant world-belter can gain only at the expense of 
much excavation in libraries, in the course of which he 
resurrects much debris which clogs the real information 
which he seeks. The world-belter who journeys by himself 
has disadvantages along with advantages. He has the tur¬ 
moil and the nuisance of numerous shifts from steamer to 
steamer, the responsibility of hotel and carriage arrange¬ 
ments, and the hiring of dragomen and guides, and these 
are only the beginning of his trouble. 

Fifth Day Out. This is the start of a legendary era in 
the leg over to Bombay. From the furnace of the Red 
Sea we pass into mellow airs, from discomfort into somno¬ 
lent languor. All is tranquil. Everybody is indolent. We 
do not think of our ship life as strange, but we know that 
friends ashore on the other side of the world would marvel 
at it. The dear children are in bare legs and socks. Little 
girls are in low neck and short sleeves. Sailors on the 
fo’c’s’le are barefooted. Little boys make their mothers 
aghast by begging to be comfortable in bare feet. I have 
interceded in Joe’s behalf, but my motion as his attorney 
has been overruled by the last court of appellate jurisdic¬ 
tion, Pretty Mamma. 

This morning the Travelers’ Club made its third attack 
on Egypt. It handled the legend about the crossing of the 
Red Sea by the Children of Israel, and one Defender of the 


68 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


Faith gave in lurid detail Theophile Gauthier’s explanation 
as printed in “ The Romance of a Mummy.” 

This evening dreamy couples are searching for the 
Southern Cross. A fine old state senator from Connecticut 
and his saintly wife are playing dominoes. 

Sixth Day Out. “ Indolence ” is more euphemistic 
than “ laziness ” and it dates farther back in philology. 
But what Latin root is there which can act as a starter to 
express your feeling of luxury and rest here in fifteen 
north latitude? You would be entirely content if somebody 
in or out of the Apostolic Succession would only draw 
your breath for you. It is a legendary era for us here on 
the ship, because nobody takes the trouble to find whether 
a story is true or is a myth. 

After luncheon a sailor, one of the after guard, sought 
to enfranchise the steamer chair fleet around him by point¬ 
ing the finger of excitement at the water abeam and 
exclaiming: 

“ Der vales! ” 

A languid dowager who had lain torpid and dormant 
for a quarter of an hour in her chair drowsily murmured 
“shoo!” A man who was inert on a companion chair, 
her helpmeet, observed, but dispassionately: 

“ To Heaven with the whales! ” 

Hour after hour drifted by with a warm but pleasant 
temperature, a smiling sea, an amethystine sky, and an easy 
breeze. A few of the youngsters occupied an hour or two 
with deck games, phenomena which a scientist might 
include among The Wonders of the Deep. By mid-after- 
noon a ripple of excitement was discerned among these 
active spirits, but the steamer chair squadrons drowsed 
along, too languorous to investigate. Later it was learned 
that the bulletin boards were blazoning with proclama¬ 
tions that a shirt-waist dance would distinguish the port 
side of the promenade deck in the evening. A dozing pirate 
in the steamer chair squadron gave a vague growl, and a 
lady next to him, who had been a Terpsichorean not many 
years ago, chided him, saying that he was “ cross.” 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 69 

Early in the evening three brawny German tars with 
the tan of the seven seas on their bared arms strung a 
stout manila line along the inboard caps of the stanchion 
heads of the port alley of the promenade deck and bent on 
a long and brilliant string of national flags. In a corner 
they made a reservation with American and German flags 
for the musicians. 

That dance on the bosom of the Arabian Sea, Aden 
astern and Bombay far ahead, days beyond the eastern 
horizon, remains in the memory as a vivid picture. Strings 
of bright-hued electric lamps gleamed from the carlins. 
Paraffin helped the reflection from the oaken planks of the 
deck. Sailors in uniform guarded each approach to the 
“ floor.” Stewards in white stood watch over giant bowls 
of lemonade. The band was gay in decorated khaki. 

But the most of the color was concentrated in the 
national ensigns. Japan’s blood-red rising sun, the tri¬ 
color of France, the crosses of St. Andrew and St. George, 
the orange and green of the Brazilian Republic, the brilliant 
jumbles of South American nations, the dragon of China, 
the clumsy elephant of Siam, and the red banner of Turkey 
with white star and crescent were barely a starter for the 
decoration. Few of the gay-hearted young dancers could 
have told over a fifth of the two dozen ensigns which 
fluttered and flaunted joyously in the light touch of the 
warm headway breeze. 

Some few of the men were in full evening dress. More 
were in dinner coats and white flannels. Some of them 
were in white flannels only. Of the ladies, some were in 
full decollete, with blazing jewels; some in shirt-waists, 
and some in raiment to a mere man a mystery. Some were 
in chiffon and some were not. 

Nearly every mother’s daughter was wearing a Madeira 
lace or carrying a Gibraltar fan or displaying Naples coral 
or a Cairo scarf. There is “ class ” to an Egyptian scarf. 
Its silver spangles and filmy gossamer gave a touch of 
romance and individualism to that unique scene in the heart 
of the sleeping Arabian Sea. 


( 


70 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

Officers of the ship were in the throng in brilliant uni¬ 
form, manly, fine-looking Germans of military erectness and 
fiercely pointed and waxed mustaches. One of the most 
popular was blessed with a back like a ramrod and a mus¬ 
tache resembling a circumflex accent upside down. It was 
whispered that he could waltz across the deck, wine glass in 
hand, and not spill a drop. Any spectator of the German 
waltz could appreciate a feat like that. 

Children were in the festivity. For little boys evening 
dress appeared to mean white sailor costumes, or white 
shirt-waists, white stockings, and white canvas shoes. 

It was a fascination to watch the kaleidoscope. At one 
time a" girl with a Neapolitan coral necklace requested her 
escort to lead her to a chair, where the amplitudinous lady 
mother was massed in reserve in a Cairo scarf. On the 
voyage across the alley her slipper mutinied; as her gallant 
partner retied the bow, a dainty silver Egyptian anklet was 
discernable. The next moment the mate of the anklet was 
seen doing duty as a bracelet on the plump wrist of a lass 
from New York. 

A few minutes later the lass was pouting at her plight, 
for she was having trouble, and a peck of it, with a scarab 
about one hundred and twenty-five times as old as the girl. 
The antiquity had been torn from its mummy to stand watch 
on the lass’s hairpin, and in the dance it had become jammed 
in some of the hair tackle. A partner from Chicago was 
doing his prettiest to clear it, as he and she stood against 
the sun flag of Japan. It made a sprightly picture, the 
New \ork head and the Nile beetle in silhouette against 
the white field and the blood-red sun of Dai Nippon. 

It was at three bells in the first watch that the dancing 
began. For nearly two hours Russia and Japan, Great 
Britain and Germany, Turkey and Greece agreed on one 
thing, encouraging the dancing. Till well after eleven 
o’clock the merry-makers waltzed, two-stepped, and barn- 
danced, and while off the floor sipped lemonade, which the 
long-houred stewards served. Then the throng began 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 71 

thinning, and soon after seven bells struck the musicians 
retired from the deck. A few minutes more and girls were 
bathing their feet with witch-hazel in their staterooms. 

Thus ends this day. Wind, S. E.; course, E. N. E.; 
temperature, 78; barometer, 29.95; clouds, cirro cumuli. 

Seventh Day Out. An officer of the ship as an after- 
math, perhaps, of the dance, is showing a copy of the 
Egyptian News printed the day we started from Cairo, in 
which it is stated that a large number of dancers from the 
party attended a ball given in Shepheard’s Hotel the evening 
before. The account goes on to say that the belle of the 
evening was “ a little fair-haired girl who had a grand time 
with her various grown-up partners.” This evening the 
course of lectures is continued with an illustrated talk by 
the Reverend Doctor Clark on “ Delhi and Cawnpore.” 

Eighth Day Out. Human nature develops in queer 
freaks sometimes on a steamship as well as ashore. A 
youth who is gifted with the rare faculty of arriving at 
opinions without much loss of time in intermediary 
processes revealed today that men in the United States Navy 
have nothing to do, and that they were not practical. A 
printed slip showing a typical sea routine and one showing 
a port routine for a battleship were shown to the youth. 
They were evidently new to him, but, nothing daunted, he 
declared that he cared naught for them. 

Something that is practical appeared this morning, when 
one of the chaperons gave a talk on shopping in the next 
port. She told about the Army and Navy shop in Bombay, 
and about other places in the city where tourists could safely 
make purchases. The talk was manna to a hundred women, 
and many remained after the discourse to ask questions. 

The currency problem is of continuous interest and 
there are many discussions over phases of it, in the smoking- 
room and elsewhere. English gold is potential anywhere in 
the Far East. American gold is receivable, we are told, 
but a caution comes to us to be on our guard when the 
change is handed out. I heard today that English silver is 


72 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


not popular in Bombay, information which seems strange 
when it is remembered that Bombay is one of the leading 
ports in the British Empire. The information is given 
that American gold certificates are likely to encounter 
difficulty ere they pass into rupees and annas.* Roughly 
speaking, the rupee is worth about thirty-two cents and the 
anna two cents. Each is a silver coin. The anna is of 
such a size that a microscope is almost required to find it. 
It is smaller than the old-fashioned three-cent piece, once 
popularly known in the Connecticut Valley as a “ shad 
scale.” 

Letters of credit seem to be in slender favor aboard 
the ship. Travelers’ checks are popular here, and the 
purser is kept busy at certain times in cashing them. 
Aboardship English or American money of whatever kind 
is taken. The ship’s post-office and the ship’s barber shop 
are good receiving and distributing centers for English gold 
and silver and, to some extent, for German money and for 
small coins of the countries which we land in. 

Once in a while a little thing happens which takes the 
conceit out of us and shows that, with all the equipment 
and foresight lavished on the ship, we are still insulated 
from some of the necessities of ordinary life. Today, in 
an unguarded moment, never mind how, I broke a lens in 
one of my glasses. It was any port in a storm and any 
shift for a repair, and so I went to the surgeon for surgeon’s 
plaster. The plaster held the lens for just about two 
minutes; then went lopsy. Next I tried a postage stamp, 
and that was worse. Finally a good angel from Philadelphia 
came to the aid with sealing wax, and that held. It is easy 
to imagine the remarks made about the blood-red wax 
and the eye.f 

Ninth Day Out. A ship like this, out of sight of land 
for days and days, a floating island, has its monotony and 

* This proved to be the case, in a number of instances, at least. 

t The repair was made in an optician’s shop in Bombay immediately after 
our landing in that port. 



AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


73 


has its variety. It is a life unto itself, as the captain would 
be a law unto himself, were attempt to be made at mutiny. 
The religious gravitate together, as the travelers who are 
born children of wanderlust find out one another, and as 
the card players and the dancers and the flirtatious and the 
athletes and passengers of one preference and another find 
out one another. 

All this is laying a foundation for a very simple state¬ 
ment: A sunrise prayer meeting was held this morning by 
the Cleveland Christian Endeavor Society, in the ladies’ 
after parlor. 

The first landfall since passing Aden was made at nine 
o’clock this morning, an island off the coast of northern 
India. At noon we came to anchor. I am writing this 
just as we are making ready for the landing. We are to 
stay in Bombay for four days. A portion of the party will 
journey to Agra to attend the fourth biennial world’s con¬ 
vention of the Christian Endeavor Society. Another sec¬ 
tion is to travel across India and rejoin the ship in 
Calcutta. From what I hear about the heat and the hard¬ 
ship, I don’t envy the members of that section. 



CHAPTER VI. 


BOMBAY AND AGRA. 


I T was on a Sunday morning that Bombay made its 
bow to us of the ship; a November morning, but 
warm as is New York City when the dog star reigns. 
Our first glimpse of the place brought to our eyes a 
low rise of land with a peculiar row of curious palms. In 
the distance the trees appeared not unlike arboreal peacock 
feather tips, or, if you please to prefer a military simile, like 
the old-fashioned disc markers in use at many of the old- 
time rifle-ranges to this day. 

Tenders came alongside to convey us to the landing 
place. Also a flotilla of small native boats came as near to 
the gangway as the oarsmen dared to pull. In one of these 
was a fakir, a man of snakes and magic. The Hindu had 
a cobra de capello in a circular basket, in which the semi- 
dormant reptile lay in coil. As soon as a score of passengers 
had descended into the first tender the man of magic 
whisked off the cover of the basket and rapped the head 
of the repulsive cobra with a wand, whereupon the ugly 
thing raised its head in sinister defiance. Its fangs had 
been extracted, but this was not known to the women who 
viewed the exhibition. The swarthy Hindu started to give 
an exhibition, but just then the deckman of the tender cast 
off, and the bow turned landward. 

The gee whiz led the tourists in victorias to five hotels, 
chief among which was the splendid Taj Mahal, which 
fronts the Apollo Bunder and the harbor. The hotels 
were not very dissimilar to those in Cairo, except that the 
Cairo average was considerably better. The bedrooms were 
large and the bedsteads were enshrined in mosquito-net 
canopies. In several of the hotels some of the sanitary 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 75 

arrangements were much inferior to those of even the third- 
rate hostelries in New York City. 

I he name of the servants in the hotels was legion. For 
the tables in the establishment where the writer held the 
fort, a table seating the four of his family and two more of 
the noble army of martyrs, there were four waiters, not 
counting the head individual or the wine waiter. Each was 
an artist when it came to the detail of tips and fees. Lucky 
was it for the head of the family that a tip of two annas 
per meal per member of the family was perfectly satisfac¬ 



tory to the swarm. You can easily figure that this 
meant some sixty-four cents a meal. It did not come to 
that sum every meal, but the average was not very far 
below. Few of the repasts figured less than a half dollar. 
When the sad time of parting came, there were rupee tips 
for the head waiter and the wine artist. Please do not for 
a moment suppose that wine is here meant literally. The 
word is used figuratively for lemon squash and like drinks, 
which came in bottles and which took the place of tropical 
drinking water, about which we were in a state of dubiety, 
having heard that it might contain germs of cholera. We 





76 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


were informed that the water in the squash and similar 
concoctions was distilled and therefore innocuous. 

The hotel in which we sheltered ourselves claimed, and 
justly, the respect due to antiquity. It enclosed a court, 
where grew noble palms and where benches were placed in 
the shade. Writing and wine tables were extending their 
invitation. It must also be chronicled that scarcely were 
we washed and at leisure before a human hellbender (your 
Webster will tell you that a hellbender is a salamander 
“which is very voracious and very tenacious”) descended 
and made it evident that he was canvassing for a tailor, 
whose shop was next door. I finally ordered, for eight and 
a half rupees, a linen suit which he had at first insisted was 
cheap at twelve. Later, I was informed that another of the 
party had ordered a like suit for seven rupees. When the 
suit came, it proved to be made of some kind of crash, or 
mysterious fabric like crash; it was a two-piece affair, with 
a tough character, and there were some of the party good 
enough to say that it made a symphony with the wearer of 
the triumph. 

Most of the tourists who had omitted to buy topees in 
Cairo made a purchase of such headgear in Bombay. It 
was a contribution to the gayety of the excursionists to 
discover grave clergymen and dignified captains of trade and 
luminaries of medicine and blazing lights of the law topped 
with those constructions of fiber and pith. It must also be 
recorded that at first not a few of the purchasers inad¬ 
vertently wore the topees wrong end before. 

Bombay was a paradise for shoppers from the party and 
for the keepers of shops. It is figured that the six hundred 
and fifty passengers expended in Bombay and Agra during 
the four days that they were ashore something like twenty 
thousand dollars. This may be an exaggeration, but it 
seems to be reasonably safe to estimate that they spent about 
twelve or fifteen thousand. This would call for an average 
expenditure of about five dollars a person a day, and as 
some spent for jewelry alone in the Taj Mahal Hotel 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


77 


fifty dollars in one day and some a hundred dollars, the 
estimate would seem to be more or less conservative. If 
to the sum which the tourists parted with be added the 
money which the officers and crew spent, a total of twelve 
thousand dollars at least is probably very close to the 
truth. The sum might have exceeded fifteen thousand 
dollars. 

In many a way Bombay is like Cairo. It is even hotter 
than the Egyptian capital; it is picturesque, full of tropical 
and strange life; it is full of color and lavish with glitter 
and blaze. It is, too, a city of business and commercial 
dignity, and its Taj Mahal is one of the finest hotels in 
Asia, outside of Singapore and Tokyo. 

The “ Taj ” is named after the splendid memorial in 
Agra erected by Shah Jehann after the untimely death of 
his favorite wife. It stands face to the water, its lavish 
Oriental architecture in full, unobstructed view. Near by 
are buildings in styles rarely seen in American cities. The 
lavish and ornate faqades and elevations, 
the decorated cornices and quaint Ori¬ 
ental roofs are bewildering to a lay eye 
from the West. An architect could 
probably spend a fat week in the Indian 
city, luxuriating among the buildings 
which rise in Saracenic, Oriental, and 
modern styles, about which the author 
must cheerfully acknowledge that he 
knows little or less than that. 

It is cheerful information which tells 
us that a large part of capital employed 
in the building of the tramways here 
came from the Far West. I took a ride 
in one of the cars, and journeyed what seemed to me to 
be about four or five miles and the tariff was only an anna, 
two and one-thirty-second cents! In any part of New 
England with which I am familiar the fare is at least five 
cents, and in some parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut 



HEAD WAITER 


78 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

it is six cents. The cars in Bombay have forward and after 
platforms and two gangways, amidships. 

Somehow the tram reminds me of the policeman of 
Bombay. In my innocence the first whom I beheld 
appeared to me like a toy. Charcoal would have made a 
white mark on him. Up to his knee he was as bare as 
Old Father Adam before the fall of man. Garish blue 
knickerbockers, a blue tunic with a canary facing, and a 
yellow turban made up his uniform. He weighed some¬ 
thing like a hundred and a quarter. His legs were as fat 
as bean-poles. I have no pride of opinion as to my own, 
and prefer the swimming tank when its crowd is small; 
but mine are like the pillars at the east front of the 
Connecticut State Capitol, compared with his. The guardian 
of the law in Bombay was about five feet five inches in 
height. An ordinary Irish policeman in New York City 
could have eaten him alive before breakfast and then would 
have come back for more. 

Early in the course of our first walk I saw a wet red 
blotch on the pavement. The next moment a Hindu spat 
a scarlet stream on the sidewalk. A vision of hemorrhage 
flashed to my mind, as I turned my eyes carefully on the 
thin, anaemic creature, but it soon came to us that the native 
was chewing betel leaf and some other growths which induce 
a ready stream of saliva and color it with a brilliant scarlet. 

On the esplanade near the boat landing a fakir was 
giving an exhibition. From the typical fakir circular 
basket he lifted out an ugly cobra. At first the reptile 
raised its hideous head and spread the hood with the two 
elliptical spots which an observer has likened to the lenses 
of a pair of spectacles. Its crimson forked tongue slit the 
air viciously for a few moments and then the cobra gradually 
lapsed into inertness and lay torpid over the Hindu’s 
shoulders. 

The fakir continued the entertainment with a sleight- 
of-hand performance which mystified some of our sub¬ 
section of the party. With a display of pain he coughed out 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


79 


an onion, and with more of such display produced another 
which was scorched between his teeth, the smoke appearing 
to come from his throat. Several of the spectators explained 
the sight by declaring that it was a piece of wholesale 
hypnotism; others were certain that it was merely a bit of 
clever legerdermain. Some few were obviously impressed 
and remained silent. 

The Hindu next took a collection. From a certain 
member of the section he extracted a rupee, to my mind 
more of a miracle than any part of the exhibition. Most 
of the contributions were annas and pies, the latter Indian 
copper coins worth a fraction of a cent each. 

Near the boat landing we ran across a group of British 
men’o’-warsmen, jackies from His Majesty’s ship Hyacinth, 
which rode at anchor out in the harbor and opposite the Taj 
Mahal Hotel. The men were sturdy lads and were in a 
white uniform, which resembles the “ whites ” of the 
United States Navy, excepting that the collar was a light 
blue with three white stripes and that the hats were of 
straw with wide brims and lettered cap ribbons, instead of 
the jaunty cloth hat with the stiff stitched brims, up¬ 
turned, which our men-o’-warsmen wear. The aloofness 
which characterizes many of the Englishmen ashore who are 
not making money out of us was little apparent in the lusty 
lads of the sea. They accepted our friendly advances with¬ 
out the pained astonishment which ordinary English resi¬ 
dents in the city, and, more especially in Ceylon, later, 
showed. 

Guide-books there are of Bombay, but they are as scarce 
in the ordinary American city as pearls dissolved in angels’ 
tears. For that reason and the further reason that the 
city is out of the traveled track of the expeditions of tourists 
from the States, I now proceed to solid information. 

“ Bombay ” is an English contraction for the early 
Portuguese Bom Bahia, or Good Haven; but how in the 
world the English navigators of Century No. 16 syncopated 
the good Portugee into the dissyllable is a mystery which 
6 


8o 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


a philologist would enjoy solving. Whatever the processes, 
the resultant is here to stay, as an Irish friend of mine said 
about the occupants of Mt. St. Benedict cemetery. The 
Portuguese sailors visited the city in 1509, and Portugal 
acquired the sometime island a few years later. 

The city has nearly a million inhabitants, of about every 
human shade from black through chocolate, bronze, chrome, 
canary, olive, mauve, coffee, tan, leather, tea rose, and 
oyster stew, to white. Continuing the solid information, I 
would say that Bombay has representatives of nearly every 
great religion, unless it be President Eliot’s. Lovers of 
Tom Moore and Lalla Rookh might enjoy talking to some 
of the queer Parsees, descendants of the old followers of 
Zoroaster, and now so-called, but misunderstood, wor¬ 
shipers of fire. 

Bombay lies on what was formerly a narrow island, but 
is now a peninsula, with the western shore facing the warm 
Arabian Sea and the eastern a harbor and the hot Indian 
mainland. Its southern part is called, after the manner of 
the English in cities of theirs in this part of the world, 
the Fort. The upper part is the native section, or old 
Bombay. Cotton, shawls, coffee, pepper, ivory, and gums 
are among the leading exports. 

Victoria station in the modern city is stated to be the 
finest railroad station ever built. It cost a good fat million 
and a half, and that in a country where the labor bill is 
next to nothing. The building is of Italian Gothic archi¬ 
tecture, in some details modified by an Oriental style. 

The municipal building is not far away, and has a 
tower two hundred and fifty-five feet in height. Among 
the charitable institutions are the Royal Alfred Sailor’s 
Home, near the water, the Jamshidji Jijibhai’s Parsee 
Benevolent Institution, and the Jamshidji Dharmsala, 
which, if I may be excused for explaining it, cures sickness 
as well as breaks jaws. 

Still extending the solid information, I would say that 
among the educational buildings are Elphinstone College, 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


endowed by a rich Parsee, and the new Elphinstone High 
School. 

The Times of India is a finely equipped and well con¬ 
ducted daily, published in Bombay. It came out with a 
special edition on the day of our arrival, and gave nearly 
two pages to news about “ Americans Abroad.” Its 
handling of news is along English lines, and appears to our 
Occidental minds to be conservative to the point of slow¬ 
ness, but the extreme is certainly preferable to the other. 
The paper was good enough to call attention to the “ nasal 
twang ” of the party, and the reporter — a reporter on that 
paper is called a “pressman,”—who boarded the ship in 
harbor kindly printed that he w T ould give all that he had 
to imitate the American pronunciation of “ Clark.” 1 
learned that his attitude toward the name was “ Clauwk.” 
I tried a bit of jest, but desisted on discerning his resistentia 
to a joke. The paper had, along with a really able and 
discriminating news story, one with the avowed purpose of 
humor and that nobody might fail to perceive the humor, it 
struggled desperately with each point. Subsequently, in 
Rangoon, we ran across a local sheet which made like 
heroic effort. We could not fail to extend sympathy to 
brave men ready to strain every nerve in a cause which they 
could not understand. 

One morning we embarked in victorias, here called 
gharries, and went in state to the Victoria Gardens, a 
beautiful park. Near the gate was a giant elephant, his 
feet heavily chained and with bars and irons between him 
and freedom. He was a noble, splendid brute, and Little 
Joe gazed at him in wide-eyed sympathy and admiration. 
Children are allowed to ride on the beast at certain times, 
but at that moment he was out of commission, to Joe’s 
sorrow. In the garden are also lions, magnificent tigers, 
and “ cat-animals,” as the circus hand would call them, 
and monkeys aplenty. Pauline records in her diary a visit 
to a “monkey temple.” She has it: 

“ Worship is held by the Hindus in honor of these beasts, who ' 
contain their ancestors’ spirits.” 


82 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


Sometimes Pauline’s pronouns puzzle me as much as 
Anglo-Saxon humor does. 

In the afternoon we were taken in a gharry to Malabar 
Hill and to the Towers of Silence, grim and grewsome 
resting places for the Parsee dead. A winding walk leads 
by bowers of tropical vines and growths to the crest of a 
ridge commanding a panorama of the city. Walls and 
streets, minarets, spires, and roofs, shipping and harbor 
stretch away to the blue outer water and the horizon, where 
the quiet Arabian Sea fades into the distant dreamy haze. 
It is in one of the most entrancing places in Central India 
that one of the strangest and, as it seems to us, most revolt¬ 
ing, methods of disposal of the dead is practiced. 

As told to us, the Parsee believes that earth is sacred, 
and that a corpse is one of the most unclean of unclean 
objects; therefore they do not bury their dead. They 
believe that fire is an emblem or manifestation of a sacred 
force; and therefore they do not cremate. They turn to the 
air to dispose of the dead. 

A circular tower is erected and equipped with a frame¬ 
work or arrangement on which the bodies are exposed after 
the funeral ceremony in the chapel near by. Then, from 
the air descend “ heaven sent birds,” as the Parsees call the 
vultures. In a few hours little is left in the troughs in the 
big cylinders but bones, and on them the tropical sun acts 
fast. On the cylinder bed are laid chalk, quicklime, and 
absorbents, which prevent any liquids entering the earth. 

As corpses are taken to the troughs the birds from a 
distance set up a discordant and raucous cawing, and to the 
Occidental mind the scene is a ghastly picture. As the 
custom was described to a section of our party by a venerable 
priest of the Parsees in the chapel, a shadow fell over us, 
cast by this weird and ghastly practice. Below stretched 
away to the hazy horizon one of the fairest pictures painted 
by Nature in India. The sun shone bright on brilliant 
green and peaceful blue, but the grewsome horror of the 
moment was nearer. The spell was cast on all but one, a 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 8j 

jejune youth from a New England State. To him it 
occurred to ask: 

“ Say, can you pull off a funeral for us this afternoon? ” 


AGRA. 

Agra is situated in the north of India, hundreds of 
miles to the northeast of Bombay. It was the convention 
city of the fourth biennial world’s gathering of the 
Christian Endeavor Society. It has nearly a quarter of a 
million inhabitants, and to these were added for several 
November days thousands and thousands of delegates and 
converts who made the pilgrimage to the city. 

Two miles of dusty road led from the railroad station 
to the white city of the convention camp. A bracing nip 
in the air was grateful after the heat back in Bombay. 
Over three hundred tents were pitched in lines not unlike 
the company streets of a military encampment. Two can¬ 
vas halls rose in an open space in the center and were 
decorated with flags. The lieutenant-governor of the 
province had contributed the use of the land, and the viceroy 
and the commander-in-chief had donated the use of the tents. 

It was figured that twenty-nine languages were spoken 
as their home tongues by one and another of the delegates, 
and that the delegates represented some three millions of 
Christian worshipers. But the principal facts about the 
great gathering would occupy pages, and they are familiar 
to those mostly interested. 

It was within a short distance of the wonderful Taj 
Mahal, “ the one absolutely perfect building in all the 
world, the despair of all architects and builders,” as Doctor 
Clark justly describes it, that the camp was pitched. This 
extraordinary mausoleum was built by Shah Jehan for his 
favorite wife. It is chronicled that twenty thousand men 
were employed on the Taj Mahal for twenty-two years in 
the middle of the seventeenth century, and that it cost 
fifteen million dollars. 

An outer court is surrounded by arcades and is adorned 













AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


85 


with four gateways. The tomb stands on a large raised 
platform or terrace, at each corner of which is a minaret of 
perfect proportion. The splendid tomb is surmounted with 
a dome of white marble seventy feet in diameter and 
adorned on the interior surface with cornelian, lapis lazuli, 
and jasper. After giving a description in mathematical 
terms of the building, Fergusson’s History of Architecture 
proceeds with: 

“ It is the most beautiful and most impressive of the 
sepulchres of the world. This building is an early example of 
that system of inlaying with precious stones which became the 
great characteristic of the Mughuls after the death of Akbar. All 
the spandrils of the Taj, all the angles and more important archi¬ 
tectural details, are heightened by being inlaid with precious 
stones, such as agates, bloodstones, jaspers, and the like. These 
are combined in wreaths, scrolls, frets, as exquisite in design as 
they are beautiful in color, and, relieved by the pure white marble 
in which they are inlaid, they form the most beautiful and precious 
style of ornament ever adopted in architecture.” 

Those of the party who went to Agra will ever carry 
with them the memory of the greatest convention held by 
one of the mightiest and most active of the Christian forces, 
and the memory of one of the most beautiful works of man. 
It was not the good fortune of the writer to travel to the 
inland city. His tastes held him true to a seacoast city. 

DOWN THE COAST. 

From Bombay the ship steamed her way down the west 
coast of India toward the Island of Ceylon. Again the 
log-diary is called on for a record. 

First Day Out. The meeting of the Travelers’ Club, 
which was held for a discussion of Bombay and Agra, 
convened this morning on the port side of the promenade 
deck, the old faithful forward dining-room being a trifle 
warm for the feast of reason. The port side was away from 
the sun, and the deck stewards were on hand to refresh 
with cold tea. It was the Taj which was the backbone of 
the hour. One talented lady who draws word pictures 
lavished on the building the utmost adjectives of admira- 


86 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


tion, but with such taste and discrimination that the picture 
was roundly applauded. 

It is on a sleeping sea that the ship is sailing southward. 
Scarcely a cloud is seen; no air stirs save the languid head¬ 
way breeze. Awnings are spread over the open deck 
spaces. Screen cloths are laced to the rails. Windsails 
lead from the boat deck down the hatches to the lower 
cabins. Electric fans are running. Windscoops are in 
most of the port holes. Cold tea is served by deck stewards 
from rime-covered tanks on the promenade deck. Ladies 
are in white and open-work, and men are in two-piece linen 
suits, sometimes with their coats elsewhere. Wellington 
prayed for night and Bliicher; men on this ship pray 
(those who are experts in prayer) for night and thunder. 
It is thus that we are sailing for Colombo, the port of 
Ceylon. Thus ends this day. 

Second Day Out. At four this morning I crawled 
from my berth and climbed stairs till I landed on 
the forecastle deck. Rain was falling. The drops made a 
restful patter on the awning, except when a flurry of wind 
caused them to beat a rataplan. It was the darkness next 
before dawn. The night had a rich damp odor from its 
salt moisture. A sea was running. Occasionally the ship 
unallowed, occasionally spray came to the waterway. Lean¬ 
ing over the rail, I peered down into the dark to hear the 
distant rhythm of the screw, and to feel the comradeship 
of the waters. I could imagine vague murmurings from 
the summer night, voices from the Arabian Sea. 

But for the sailor at the wheel far above me, the officer 
on the bridge, the lookout watch, and the stokers far down 
below decks who fed the fires and kept ward over the 
engine-room .guages and valves, the ship was asleep. 

Minute after minute wore by. In a quarter of an 
hour from a sailor in a hammock over the fore hatch came 
the first notes of the awakening. Then from spaces down 
in the forecastle other notes rose. The darkness was 
thinning to the gray which preludes dawn. A few minutes 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


87 


brought the ship to consciousness. Cabin stewards flitted up 
from below. The Cerberus of the swimming pool con¬ 
nected the hose for the tank. In half an hour the earliest 
of the bathers came from their berths in bathrobes and 
Chinese heelless slippers. The starboard horizon now lay 
miles away. The bugler sounded his reveille. The ship 
was officially awake, and just then the last drops of rain fell. 

The forenoon was one of lassitude, the unambition 
which latitude twelve spells for men who have spent their 
lives twenty-five to thirty degrees farther away from 
the equator. 

A steamer chair in some shady corner which the head¬ 
way breeze reaches, the cold tea brought by a ministering 
angel in a steward’s uniform, the cold maraschino soup, and 
the tutti frutti ice-cream at dinner,— these and the family 
were the only things which made life worth living till the 
ship drops her hook by the breakwater at Colombo. 

• Third Day Out (and First Day In). She has just 
dropped her hook. 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE PARADISE OF THE WORLD. 


D OWN where the Arabian Sea merges into the 
Indian Ocean, some six degrees above the 
blazing equator, is the Summer Isle of Eden, 
in which, as writers and artists agree, is 
situated the island Paradise of the Earth, the most 
exquisitely lovely scene in all creation. Far-famed in song 
and story, in poetry, and on the canvas, Ceylon stands for 
the last word in beauty of scenery. In those low latitudes 
our good Mother Nature is a fond and partial lover, rather 
than the cool philosopher which she is in our own temperate 
state. In Ceylon she has exhausted her fairest and fondest 
gifts. She has poured out with yearning love the most 
glorious wealth of color and foliage, of landscape and 
mountain view, of jungle, forest, and woodland, till, if 
there be an earthly paradise which may suggest that 
reserved for the pure in heart, it is in the interior of that 
splendid island. 

Mark me, I said the interior of Ceylon, for the intro¬ 
duction to the island, the seaport, Colombo, is modest, a 
town of beauty, but not of surpassing loveliness. 

Landing, our party faced a view down a wide colon¬ 
nade lined with splendid shade trees of noble height, 
overarching a smooth roadbed of terra cotta hue. Natives 
in gaily-hued costumes, with turban or fez or bare bronze 
head, with coal-black hair hanging half-way to their 
shoulders, took our passengers in rickshaws. We drove 
along broad, shaded streets and then narrow thoroughfares 
with doors and walls- on the street line, thresholds flush 
with the pavement. Palms and palmettos, banana trees and 
strange growths made an unfamiliar setting for one-story 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


89 


houses with roofs of red tile or thatches of bamboo and 
dried palm fronds. All along the drive were signs in Tamil 
or other characters, telling their tales in tongues unknown 
to any of our party. 

Back in Bombay we had seen miserable thin-legged 
men and ill-nourished women. In Colombo we saw finel5^- 
proportioned men with sturdy naked shoulders and brawny 
biceps of which a Yale oarsman might be proud. Many of 
the men were athletes in appearance, pictures in living 
mahogany. The women were comely and well nourished, 
plump lasses in costumes gorgeous in hue. The children 
welcomed us in open wide-eyed w T onder, and waved a 
delighted greeting. 

Soon we entered a path, a slit or blaze of red clay. 

In a letter written to a friend at home I described this 
in the following words: 

“ It runs between masses of dark green growths. Overhead, 
the arching limbs of acacias and the lofty fronds of palms shut 
out the sun. The path led into a twilight which nearly became 
a gloom. A little clearing was reached, a tiny Hindu village, with 
a store, in which bunches of red and yellow bananas were hanging 
and where bread fruit was displayed. 

“ Into the cool and grateful twilight the path plunged again, 
with strange tropical vegetation on either hand. A few 
minutes later a small Christian church came in sight, with a 
fagade of brilliant white and a lawn of heavy grass. White- 
clad worshipers could be seen on benches in the interior, and an 
overflow congregation extended out to the roadside. Beyond, the 
path led away from the river bank, and by a native bungalow 
with whitewashed wall and lattice window. 

“ Then with turns and windings the foray progressed till the 
party arrived in front of high terraces culminating in a temple, 
where a grotesque image of “ wood and stone ” rested. We were 
told that this was not an idol, but that it represents an ideal, a 
spirit of goodness in the world. It is all in the angle of view, 
possibly. Such, too, may be the case in regard to a certain inci¬ 
dent occurring in the journey. The party passed at the beginning 
a number of children whose clothing was more emblematic than 
liberal. Finally it came upon a jolly, pot-bellied little rascal with 
a mere cord passed around the waist. # 

‘“The cunnings!’ murmured a Connecticut lady, all affection.’’ 

The letter continues with the following: 

“ Colombo has a population of about 200,000, and the city an 
area of about ten square miles. It has admitted in turn Biahmin 


90 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


and Tamil invaders in times long past. In succession it has been 
the capital of Portuguese, Dutch, and British domination. The 
Galle Face Hotel is a remarkably fine hostelry, equal to the best 
in India. Tea is exported in large quantities, and Sir Thomas 
Upton’s tea business at Colombo is among the most important 
industries of the city. Rubber and rice are also handled here. 
But all of this information and more, too, can be obtained in any 
late encyclopedia. 

“ The Galle Face Hotel is shaded by giant palms reaching 
far above its roof. It is heated by the cool breeze which comes in 
from the sea, indigo from the horizon to a mile from the beach, 
where it begins to lighten, changing by subtle gradations to a 
brilliant, almost glossy emerald till it rears and creams in mighty 
breakers, which crash and pound on one of the smoothest beaches 
in the East. For well over a quarter of a mile the beach extends 
with a retaining wall bounding an esplanade of red clay. The 
music of the ocean as pealed in the crash of the breakers 
never ceases. 

“ Part of one afternoon we spent at Mount Lavinia, a high 
headland with clumps of palms at the summit. A tiny gem of a 
beach lay at one side and drawn up back from the wet shingle 
were picturesque catamarans, long, narrow, deep canoes with two 
outriggers each reaching to a parallel log. The catamaran may 
not trace its lineage to Father Noah, but it traces far toward the 
dawn of Oriental history, back into the twilight centuries of the 
East, when all but a few of the islanders were barbaric. As we 
were gazing at a latter-day descendants of sires dead over three 
thousand years ago, one was sighted several miles off the beach. 
Hull down, it was seen as a blot of brown canvas. Its progress 
inshore was followed with keen interest, and as it neared the 
outermost breakers the skill which the brown men showed was 
applauded. In a moment it was riding a swell and in another 
it was balancing over into the trough. In succession, it rode or 
conquered the curling crests. Then it came down easily in a 
foot or two of water, and in another minute was being hauled 
toward dry sand and the shade of the ocean palms. 

“ Somehow the fancy liked to range to other days, before 
steam invaded the ocean back in years long gone by, when the 
crosses of St. Andrew and St. George w T ere rarely seen from the 
masthead or the peak of warship. Back in those adventurous 
days this headland might have been a pirate’s lookout. On this 
beach a boat might have landed. In the shadow of the palms 
near the border of the jungle the bearded captain might have 
buried his brass-bound chest, filled with doubloons, pieces of eight, 
moidores, pearls, jewels, silver, and gold. By that rock he may 
have leaned on a flintlock gun, sword or cutlass at his side, and a 
pistol struck in his sash or belt. 

“ But this is the twentieth century, and the only pirates are 
hotel proprietors, who charge half a rupee for a glass of cold tea, 
or natives, who sell some silica mystery for moonstones. 

“ At the start, the railway trip to Khandv was modest, I might 
say tame. But in time there is a change. A small tea plantation 
comes into sight, and ere long the train begins to climb the 
Khandyan Mountain. In a few moments the eye looks down 
upon a deep gorge with palms in clusters along the bottom 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


91 


land. The train continues its ascent, and from another height the 
tourist looks upon a slender river flowing through a fertile, 
narrow valley. 

All down the steep mountain sides are terrace upon terrace 

upon terrace, banked at the outer edges with tiny rims which 

retain the shallow, life-giving water for use in the warm davs to 
come. In places are cascades of greenery, vines in festoons from 
crags or from tree to tree. The eye reaches across to the green- 

clad slope of the companion hill, defending the valley on its 

further side. 

“ In a few minutes the train reaches Sensation Rock. From 

the steel ribbons, the travelers gaze down a sheer precipice a 
thousand feet and more upon what might be called the Garden 
of God, masses of luxuriant green, terraces and rice fields, 
flowering creepers, crag above and rich lands below, with a 
thread of river shadowed by clustering groves of palms. 

“ At another time the eye rests upon a wayside station and 

masses of flowers of yellow and scarlet under domes of vivid 

green, with the high fronds of cocoanuts rising beyond. 

“ We breathe pure mountain air and see the highest peak 
grow dim in a hazy white. But soon the mist lifts, and the 
peak once more stands out boldly on the sky. 

“ CONDENSED CEYLON. 

“ In time the engine pulled into a station, and the party 

embarked in victorias and rickshaws for the Royal Botanic 
Gardens of Perideniya. These are condensed Ceylon, a lovely 
wonderland with the flora of the island arranged and developed 
by scientific hands. Traversing firm roadbeds and in the shade 
of noble centurions of palms and unfamiliar trees, we reached 
plots where orchids were in bloom. 

“ Then we started on the drive to Khandy. It was along a 
twilight lane which almost seemed to have been cut through the 
vegetation that we traveled. A wild and tangled riot of greenery 
rose on each side. Branches and fronds interlaced and inter- 
arched over our heads. At one point masses of blooms of vivid 
scarlet and blazing yellow burned in the woodland, tropical flowers 
unknown to us. 

“ As we drove along, we met a native leading an elephant. 
A little lad in our contingent halted the native who was* per¬ 
spiring between the shafts of his rickshaw. Out the little lad 
hurried. He made a bargain with the Tamil, and in a trice the 
elephant was kneeling. With lugubrious eyes the pachyderm 
waited till the boy ascended its shoulder, with the Tamil’s 
assistance. While the boy held on for dear life, the pachyderm 
lumbered up into a standing posture, and then a lady with a 
camera took a photograph. 

“ On arrival at Khandy we went to the Queen’s Hotel for tiffin, 
or lunch, which was served by dusky waiters, here, as in every 
place which we have visited in the East, bare-footed and in 

native costume. . . 

“ Khandy is another of Ceylon’s bowers, a city encircling a 
tiny lake and expanding into the sides of wooded mountains. 
Cocoanut trees shade it. The fronds of royal palms wave over it. 


92 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


Glorious gardens embosom quaint or beautiful bungalows. Sinuous 
drives lead to villas islanded in green, vivid with the painting of 
the tropics and fresh with the mountain breath. 

“ In that paradise of tropical beauty, what was it that most 
caused our pulses to thrill? It was a sight which is seen every 
day in the Charter Oak City. Rounding a turn in the lake drive, 
we discerned against the vine-shrouded balcony of a bungalow a 
banner too little encountered in the Orient, the ensign of the 
republic. The leading carriage halted. There was a wild 
scramble up the terrace and along a flower-lined walk to the 
piazza, where a pleasant-faced lady courteously received the 
invaders as graciously as if they were long-expected guests, instead 
of intruders whose emotions had conquered their manners. A 
family coming from Pennsylvania occupied the cottage, and had 
spread ‘ Old Glory ’ in honor of the American invasion. 

“ buddha’s tooth. 

“ Flanking the lake, the party approached one of the most 
venerable temples in Ceylon, in fact, in the East. It was Dalada 



DALADA MALIGAWA 
(Temple of the Tooth of Buddha) 

Maligawa, or temple of the tooth of Buddha. Ancient tradition 
has it that the good Princess Kalinga brought it to Ceylon in the 
third century, concealing it in the long folds of her raven hair. 
In the fourteenth century the Malabars carried it back to India, 
where a Portuguese archbishop burned it. Then a new tooth was 
made, and here it is. 




AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


93 


The lelic is the great Buddhist palladium, and is reverenced 
by nearly 300,000,000 of living men and women. Some of 
our party visited the temple in the early evening and wit¬ 
nessed a spectacle different from any they had ever seen, the 
worship of the relic by the beating of tomtoms and the offering 
of flowers. 

“in the moonlight. 

" A ride of three hours by train brought the invaders back to 
Colombo. It was a memorable journey. At the start the rails led 
along the side of Mistland. An argent moon shone on the higher 
peaks and into the valley, illuminating the heavy curls of vapor 
from the river and the bottoms. Its silver softened the crags, and 
made a fairyland of the mountain sides, an elfland for the light 
feet of Titania and her court. 

“ THREE TINY TADS. 

“ On the morning of the next day two of our own party drove 
to Bore!la and passed out into the country. They wandered far 
afield in the woodland till they entered a cool nook in a thick 
cluster of palms. Above the meeting fronds the air was rife 
with warm sunlight, but below the groined green arch of the 
woodland aisle was comfort. The voices of happy little children 
at play had lured us on. In a few moments we saw the sparkling 
eyes of three of the tiny tads gazing at us with the frank curiosity 
of childhood the wide world over. One innocent little fellow, 
whose raiment was barely even emblematic, came bravely to us, 
his lips parted in a smile and disclosing teeth which gleamed 
like snow. For a moment I expected the appeal “ bakhsheesh,” 
but I was glad to find that my American suspicion was undeserved. 
The little tyke gave a wave of his small black hand and then 
reached it out to me. A companion came forw'ard and proudly 
exhibited a toy boat which he had been making. 

“ It is true that here in Ceylon ‘ every prospect pleases,’ but as 
to whether ‘ only man is vile,’— let some man older and wiser 
than I am sit in judgment. 


* “ But, ‘ Absence Makes the Heart Grow r Fonder,’ and fondly 
let me turn to the hour of our departure from Colombo. Pas¬ 
sengers were clustered along the landward rails, taking their last 
look at the port, oriental architecture along the shore, graceful 
palms rising in the distance and wooded heights far inland. For 
three days they have visited one of the favored gardens of the 
earth, a paradise where loving Mother Nature with fond and 
lavish hand has showered her most entrancing gifts, as if 
exhausting her treasures in final generosity. 

“ In the opinion of veteran travelers in two hemispheres, of 
men who have seen the rarest gifts of Nature in warm latitudes, 
where she is a passionate lover rather than the cold-blooded philoso¬ 
pher of our own temperate clime, earth has no more exquisitely 
entrancing pictures than those painted with forest and flower, 
mountain, rock, and river, field and valley, jungle and beach and 
cloud-flecked sky, than here in the green island of Ceylon. 



94 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


“ As our anchor rose a young girl’s fingers touched the keys of 
a piano and several young voices joined in the lines of a song. 
I listened with spirit attuned to the music: 

“ ‘ In the beautiful isle of dreams, dear, 

There is never a sorrow or tear.’ 

“ ‘ Well,’ says Denison, who is nothing if not practical, ‘ Ceylon 
has Naples beaten to a frazzle.’ 

“ ‘ To pulp,’ Barbour says, ‘ but I hear that Java has something 
nearly equal to this.’ 

“ That is heresy.” 


“ What though the spicy breezes 
Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle 
And every prospect pleases 
And only man is vile; 

In vain with lavish kindness 
The gifts of God are strewn, 

The heathen in his blindness 
Bows to wood and stone.” 

Every Christian worker familiar with the English 
language should recognize these lines, the second verse in 
one of the most popular of missionary hymns. In the verse 
Ceylon is pictured as an earthly paradise, where live 
heathens to be converted to the true faith. We who have 
seen the garden of Perideniya and the Vale of Khandy, and 
wondered at that marvelously beautiful railroad ride, are 
ready to testify that Ceylon is a bower of tropical beauty, 
a paradise of entrancing loveliness, where every prospect 
pleases which Nature opens. But whether man is vile — 
that must be according to the angle of view. 

At any rate, some of us who have been charmed when 
hearing the mighty, sonorous hymn, a battle cry of the 
church militant, pealed forth in majestic notes and bars 
from a full-volumed organ, and sung in its martial har¬ 
monies by choir and congregation, who turned to it as 
expressing in music one of the leading teachings of the 
Christian church, some of us, I believe, have now a new 
memory. Here in the heart of heathendom, if our grand¬ 
fathers were instructed aright, occurs an attempt on the 
part of heathen missionaries to turn the tables. 

At intervals during the three days that the ship lay off 



AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


95 


the island, disciples of Buddha distributed tracts and cate¬ 
chisms to numbers o-f tourists. 

It was turning the tables. And not only that. It was 
turning the tables by using ammunition provided by princes 
of reason, some of the men of mightiest intellect in the 
Western world, thought-sovereigns, some of them, of the 
Caucasian race. 

At first the tracts were looked upon as a kind of strange 
joke. In a short time a number of serious-minded 
observers came to consider them with wonder, and on read¬ 
ing them more carefully, with respect. The change was 
due, in part, to the character of the reasoners quoted, in 
part to the unstinted commendation which the reasoners 
gave to Buddhism. 

Here are some of the quotations: 

MAX MULLER. 

“ The greatest religion in the world, built on a foundation 
which can never be shaken.” 

BISHOP BRIGANDET. 

“ This religion * * * in its high moral character * * * is 
unparalleled in the history of mankind.” 

FIELDING-HALL. 

“ In accepting the conceptions of Buddhism we are opening to 
ourselves a new world of unimaginable progress.” 

SOPHIA EGOROFF. 

“ Buddhism, the highest religion that is in full harmony with 
modern science, * * * that alone can unite all, * * * bringing 
peace, welfare, health, and happiness to mankind.” 

DR. PAUL CARUS. 

“ Buddhism is a religious mythology explained in scientific 
terms * * *. It is the skeleton key which in its abstract simplicity 
fits all locks. * * * Buddhism dispenses with miracles; it assumes 
no authority except the illumination of a right comprehension of 
the facts of existence.” 

DR. DAHLKE. 

“ Buddhism is not only the highest of all religions, but also the 
highest conceivable system. * * * Alone among world religions 
it stands in.no a priori contradiction to science * * *• Buddhism 
knows nothing of that attitude of arrogant aversion that belongs 
to other religions.” 

7 


96 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

Little groups on the ship from time to time discussed 
points in the tracts. Some of the well-read made quotations 
from Sir Edwin Arnold and Mrs. Besant, and it was 
agreed, with a certain kind of strange respect, that a 
religion which had three hundred million worshipers con¬ 
tained something fundamental in its appeal to the human 
head and the human heart. The visit of Baba Bharati to 
the United States and his epigram “ Though blood is thicker 
than water, love is thicker than blood/’ were talked over. 

The copies of the Buddhist catechism distributed were 
presented, as an inserted leaf showed, 

“To members of the American Tourist party in commemora¬ 
tion of their visit to our thrice sacred island, Lanka, ‘ the 
resplendent,’ by the Maha-Bodhi Society, 21st November, 2453 
Buddhist Era.” 


In the preface it is stated: 

“ The Christian Church is far-seeing enough to observe that 
from no quarter is its supremacy menaced so strongly as from the 
teaching of the Indian Prince of the tribe of the Sakyos. Even 
the German Emperor was moved to call all Christendom to a 
united battle against Buddhism in an allegorical painting wherein 
he depicts it as a disastrous, destructive power. But the truth 
promulgated by the Buddha is not destructive to the civilization 
of Europe, as the Emperor imagines; it is a destroyer only of 
error, delusion, superstition, and of mental and moral bondage; 
and only those have occasion to become alarmed to whose advan¬ 
tage it is when darkness reigns instead of light.” 

It was stated in the preface that the first German edi¬ 
tion of the catechism appeared in 1888, and that the copies 
distributed were from a translation of the eighth edition; 
and that the work had been translated into French, Dutch, 
Swedish, Italian, Bohemian, Hungarian, Russian, and 
Japanese. 

But I turn for a moment or two to an incident 
which occurred at Mount Lavinia, the picturesque and 
palm-crowned headland told about in the newspaper letter. 
Callow English youths were seated at a table in the hotel, 
and with the sufficient air which distinguishes many 
Englishmen in the Far East, bent supercilious looks as 
groups of the American party entered. Although the day 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


97 


was extremely warm even for Mount Lavinia, they were 
drinking whiskey and “ brandy-and-sodas.” From glances 
they progressed to stares, and finally to remarks which were 
caustic, hut without wit, remarks made in a stage aside. 
Finally one cub made a clumsy and labored observation 
about “ Americans ” which was intolerable. Quick as a 
flash one of our section shaded his eyes with one hand and 
stretched the other seaward: 

“ Ryder,” said he to a companion, “ that is the Bay of 
Bengal. It’s big enough for three Englishmen to go wading 
in it at the same time.” 

It was an inelegant and rather cheap hit, but if circum¬ 
stances could justify the whack, it was certainly justified. 
At any rate the members of the party within earshot smiled 
broadly, and the thick-witted and large-pedaled cub had 
no response ready. 

A story might be told about Little Joe’s experience 
immediately after leaving the Garden of Perideniya, 
“ Condensed Ceylon.” It was stated in the newspaper 
letter that the boy clambered to a position on an elephant’s 
shoulder and was photographed. As he was sitting astride 
the pachyderm’s neck he looked across the lane and in the 
twilight saw a Hindu, who was kneeling at the edge and 
was bowing his head toward a small receptacle in which 
some of the passers-by dropped small coins. The native was 
bald, and as he bowed the crown of his head touched the can. 

With memories of humorous illustrations fresh in his 
mind, Little Joe shrilled out with: 

“ Popper, is that Happy Houlihan and his tomato can? ” 


CHAPTER VIII. 


CHILD MARRIAGE IN INDIA. 


T HREE days carried us up the Bay of Bengal, into 
the Hooghly River, and to Calcutta, capital city 
of India. The first of these days taught us a 
new lesson, one of interest to a family travel¬ 
ing on a three months’ trip on the same ship. It was 
Guenther, along with Mikkarie, who taught us the lesson. 

Guenther was the patient, plodding draft-horse who 
was our cabin steward. Everybody stepped on him, and 
you used a chisel and mallet to get a joke into his poor 
patient cerebellum. It seemed that the whereabouts of a 
white sailor 'blouse of Little Jo.e’s which went to the 
laundry over a fortnight before we reached Ceylon was 
shrouded in mystery. The wash had come back to us in a 
wrapping-paper package and had been paid for. It was not 
till after the package was opened that the absence was dis¬ 
covered. Guenther was astonished; pained; said he would 
speak to Mikkarie. Several days went by, and Guenther 
said Mikkarie was looking for the garment. Several more 
dragged along, and Guenther then said that Mikkarie was 
“ excited ” and that he could do nodding with Mikkarie. 
At this juncture Pretty Mamma drew me into the compli¬ 
cation. I was mystified as to the identity of Mikkarie, 
but in due season learned that I was to deal with McCarty, 
foreman of the laundry. 

McCarty was very sorry, sir, but the Dutchman had got 

him that riled that he had told the Dutchman to go - 

never mind about that, sir. A heart-to-heart talk with 
McCarty and a good cigar led to the resurrection of the 
blouse. You may think that this is a trivial matter to 



AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


99 


immortalize here, but if you were taking a family around 
the world you would recognize its domestic importance. 


Near the mouth of the Hooghly River we transferred 
to a river steamboat, not unlike one of the pilot days of 
Mark Twain. As sailors in the Far East explain it, the 
Hooghly River shallows and bars make fast. Occasionally 
a week or two will witness the foundation of a bar, and 
pilots are unwilling to take a vessel of deep draft up to 
Calcutta. Some of the bars have a property resembling 
that of a quicksand, and, all in all, the captains of sea¬ 
going vessels are well content to anchor some seventy-five 
or eighty-five miles below the city. 

Scarcely had our section of the party reached port in 
the Grand Continental Hotel in Calcutta when two 
American women, residents of Dhurrumtolla Road, called 
on several of the members. They were field workers of the 
Woman’s Restoration League, an organization engaged in 
the uplifting of women in India. 

India is a land of swollen wealth, with famine and 
suffering at the side of immense riches; a land of ancient 
customs, one of the strangest of which is the practice of 
child marriage. Centuries ago, as Mohammedan warriors 
were conquering the peninsula, the brute, unbridled passion 
of the invaders led them to excesses in all lines of violence, 
but married native women were immune. To secure pro¬ 
tection for the young girls, Hindus gave their daughters 
in betrothal at the age of ten, and the age in a short time 
in many instances was made five or six. It was quickly 
found that little girls to secure the protection wished should 
be sent to the homes of their prospective parents-in-law. 
From such a start has grown a custom which has outlived 
the original necessity, and which is now interwoven with 
the Hindu religion, a custom which at first is almost incon¬ 
ceivable to the American mind, is later disputed as a mis¬ 
take in statement, and finally accepted with horror and 
repulsion. 



IOO 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


Child marriages are, according to native economists, to 
the missionaries, and to officials of the British administra¬ 
tion, a social scourge to India. The evil stunts the physical 
growth of the young mothers,— girls from ten to twelve 
years of age,— checks their spiritual development, and 
makes home education next to impossible. It leads on to 
unspeakable cruelty and to desertion and suicide. 



WIFE, Nine. HUSBAND, Forty-five 


When the matter is taken up with a man not familiar 
with the evil, he supposes that mere betrothal is meant. 
It is that which is meant, and much more, complete 
marriage, with the full intent of the institution. The 
marriage of a girl of nine or ten years of age is no novelty 
in Calcutta, or in nearly any Indian city where the ancient 
faith of the Hindus has numerous followers. A teaching 
of the Hindu religion requires a girl to be married at 



AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


IOI 


twelve, at the latest; otherwise she is thought to be unmar¬ 
rigeable, and is in danger of losing caste. Her parents 
are disgraced, and they, too, are in danger of losing caste. 

Tourists from the ship were told of specific instances 
of marriages of girls at the age of ten and eleven, and with 
their own eyes they saw on sidewalks in the native quarters 
girls who were still children who were wearing in the 
median parting of their hair the scarlet line which is the 
sign of wifehood. I saw a girl with the slim physique of 
childhood who was pointed out as nine years who wore the 
scarlet stain; she was described as the wife of the man 
whose store she tended by day and whose home she occupied. 

Some of the husbands are boys of nineteen or twenty, 
but some are forty-five or more. I was told of a man of 
sixty-five who was married to a girl of ten. 

An American woman told of an experience of a child- 
wife which the woman saw and investigated. The child 
had been taken to her new home, across a creek from that 
of her birth. The pain which she endured led her to return 
to her old home. She was escorted back to her husband’s, 
and on the next day again sought her parents. Her hus¬ 
band then led her to the creek and plunged her head under 
the water, repeatedly pressing it below the surface and 
covering it on emergence with a small chicken coop. 

When the American woman interfered, the man declared 
that the girl was possessed of a devil, and that it was his duty 
to drive the devil out. Many a story like this is told. 
Other stories are told which are not for print. 

A dozen years ago some of the American missionaries 
assaulted this monstrous and cruel evil, but their work is 
wide, and the child marriage evil is but one of their many 
targets. In other directions the missionaries appear to have 
made splendid progress, but in this they have made little, 
if any, headway. 

Speaking in a broad way, a British administration rarely 
interferes with, directly by law, with the natives’ religion. 

On account of these and other reasons there was but 


102 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


slight improvement in the situation until 19° 1 > when some 
American women organized the Woman’s Restoration 
League of India. Two women from Los Angeles w r ho had 
traveled in India and seen some of the hideous details of 
the child-wives’ servitude were instrumental in the forming 
of the league. 

By a woman who is a field worker for the league, I was 



NORRENDO NATH SEN 


taken to the home of Norrendo Nath Sen, owner and editor 
of the Indian Mirror, a leading publication in the city, w T ho 
is active among the small body of natives who are com¬ 
batting the evil. I was told by the Indian gentleman that 
there was an increasing feeling among numbers of the 
Hindus that the custom was weakening the race. The best 
aid for any improvement lay, so I was told, in any change 
for the better in the Hindu public opinion. 

The field workers to whom I have referred are Miss 




AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 103 

Carrie A. Tennant, vice-president of the league, and Mrs. 
Caroline P. Wallace. Miss Mary Garbutt of Los Angeles 
is the president. 

Justice Ashutosh Muskeiji is one of the leaders of the 
reform movement. He is a Brahmin of the Brahmins. He 
was born in Calcutta and is a son of a prominent physician. 
He graduated from College with great honor and entered 
the High Court of Calcutta. The justice is vice-chancellor 
of Calcutta University. Until a short time ago he was 
known as a genuine orthodox Hindu, but when he allowed 
the remarrying of his young daughter his standing as a 
genuine follower of the orthodox view was lost. The 
marriage of a widow is looked upon as one of the most 
flagrant offenses against the faith. 

Justice Muskeiji opposes child marriage because of the 
intolerable misery which child widows are called on to 
endure. His reputation as a jurist is secure, but it is 
probable that he will be more widely known as an 
enlightened reformer and social worker, than for his labor 
on the bench. His attitude toward his daughter’s re¬ 
marriage has done more to advance the remedy of the 
monstrous evil than the work which any other Hindu has 
done in many a year. 

Most of the work for the cure of the evil is carried 
along lines largely or entirely apart from the missionary 
work. It is recognized that the religious opposition is 
much less when the change is advocated from the inside 
than is pressed by foreigners and a different religion. The 
legislation which would be necessary is desired to be gained 
on Hindu initiative. 

The evil elicited considerable interest among numbers 
of the tourists who looked into the situation. Some who 
felt scanty interest in the missionary movement were more 
disposed to aid in the campaign than in the missionary work. 
Miss Tennant received encouragement of a substantial 
nature, and names and address were given for her future use. 

Christian work in the city is much in evidence when an 


104 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


observer looks for it. There are two Y. M. C. A. build¬ 
ings. There are cathedrals, churches, and religious institu¬ 
tions. The Bishop’s College was erected by the Society for 
the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. The 
Jesuit’s College is another Christian building. But the 
number of Hindu temples is far greater than that of 
Christian buildings and institutions of whatever description. 
There are many mosques. 

We were taken in gharries to the site of The Black 
Hole of Calcutta, and saw the slab and the tablet which 
mark the crime of the Nawab of Bengal, who captured 
Fort William in 1756. The story was new to some of the 
party, who listened with horror as they were told of the 
crowding of one hundred and forty-six Europeans into a 
guardroom scarcely twenty-one feet square, where the 
prisoners were confined overnight. In the morning but 
twenty-three were breathing. 

We saw, too, the noble banyan tree, which has now a 
spread nearly equal to half a city square. It was grateful 
to pass into its shade, and rest. 

From an afternoon of sight-seeing, we returned to the 
Grand Continental Hotel, to find posted in the corridor 
a notice that in the theatre nearby a performance would be 
given, that evening, of “ The Merry Widow.” Truly, 
either the world is small, or Calcutta is not a nook for a 
simon pure child of Wanderlust. At any rate I economize 
space for a city which is aside from the highway of the 
East and bestow it on the capital of Burmah. 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE PARADISE OF THE MISSIONARY. 


A SHIP has a sea routine. We of this ship are now 
familiar with the sea routine from the time the 
bugler sounds reveille to the time certain 
stewards turn down or out lights in the smoking- 
rooms and the social hall. We recognize that we are 
divorced from life ashore and are ten thousand miles away 
from New York. Ours is a life that was at first new to 



BLESSINGS IN A BUNCH 


most but the world-belters; it is now routine to the 
great mass. 

It is probably the first time that any large number of 
families with children have traveled around the planet on 
purely a pleasure trip. I have told about some of the 
experiences, happy and sad, which we have met with on 
the ship, and to these permit me to add an account which 
many a sadly pestered father will appreciate. 









106 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

All of the day after leaving Calcutta Little Joe mis¬ 
behaved. The fact is, that he equaled his record for 
naughtiness. At dinner his conduct was that reprehensible 
that it devolved on me to check him, and at once. But 
how to check the lad? That was the rub. Family life on 
a ship like the Cleveland is so new that no benevolent John 
Habberton has formulated advice as to emergency of such 
a nature. The little fellow, with the wisdom of children 
(who know much more than the average grown-up gives 
credit for), counted on his mother’s aversion to a scene, 
and he ran riot until father was in the logic of matters 
forced to intervene. 

And so it was that with a lusty and vociferous Joe 
under my wing I navigated from the extreme forward port 
corner of the after dining-room around to the starboard 
side with nearly a hundred diners in amazement and not 
a few of them making audible observation as to my cruelty* 
The journey continued forward to the forward dining¬ 
room. Pretty Mamma was by that time full of ruth and 
consumed with alarm for the boy. I discovered her 
in my wake, and in a jiffy heard her beg me to 
put Joe down, the very worst thing which I could have 
done. No; the thing now was to teach the lad that his 
sire was stern and must be obeyed. So it was down to the 
middle deck and into the stateroom. 

By that time the boy was discerning that he had made 
a mistake and when the first preparations were being made 
for further correction he was really, and for sufficient reason, 
penitent. But the correction was made, and I had the con¬ 
solation of hearing a voice in the next room say: “ It was 
high time. That kid has been intolerable all day.” 

I dwell on this incident for the reason that many a 
father is likely to take young hopefuls around the world 
in the next five or six years, and to suggest that, while 
everything depends on the individual, there are individuals 
who require heroic treatment,— and the sooner the better. 
We had no further trouble with Joe till we went ashore in 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 107 

Manila, where well intending people interfered with dis¬ 
cipline, and it became necessary to restore regulation, even 
in the Hotel de France, in the Filipino capital. 

While I am touching on family life on a steamship on 
a trip let me explain a trait which is fast developing among 
our tourists. Clerks and porters in nearly every hotel in 
the Far East appear to have for their institutions an esprit 
du corps or some other feeling which impels them to dis¬ 
tribute hotel labels and to offer to paste these on suit¬ 
cases. By the time we departed from Calcutta several 
hundred of the suit-cases were growing resplendent with 
gorgeous “ stickers,” as the more frivolous called them. In 
most instances the owners of the cases aided and abetted 
the hotel people in decorating. 

Some of the conveniences of home must be missing on 
a trip to the Far East. It is difficult or impossible to 
obtain mucilage, for instance. Against that, numbers of 
the passengers gave to their cabin stewards retainers to find 
paste and to stick on labels which the travelers had secured 
at hotel office desks. 

Large and important as it is, Rangoon is still an out-of- 
the-way place, as far as travel from America is concerned. 
The stream which comes from the West dwindles to a 
rill by the time it reaches Calcutta. That which travels 
to the West comes nearly to a full stop at Manila and 
Hong Kong. The around the world travelers touch at 
Singapore and either Calcutta or Colombo, but few of them 
turn aside to see Rangoon. 

Accordingly Rangoon possessed nearly the same novel 
charm to the great body of our passengers that Labuan 
possessed, later on, for the real thing among globe-trotters. 
It was a port which was new and therefore interesting, 
whatever its own real merits. 

Rangoon is the capital and chief port of Burmah. It 
it situated on the east branch of the Irrawaddy River, and 
has a fine location for internal, as well as foreign trans¬ 
portation. It has a population of well over a quarter of a 



Courtesy of Thomas A. Peabody. 

JAIN TEMPLE, IN CALCUTTA 

an old friend from the homeland was standing, topee in 
hand, and eyeing the tourists in search for his lang syne 
companion. He was the Reverend Jesse F. Smith, pro- 


108 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


million. The main industrial plants are lumber, rice, and 
oil mills. Tea and rice are the main exports. 

On the float at the landing, as our tenders approached, 







AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


109 


fessor of the Pali language in the Rangoon Baptist College, 
a son of a fine old comrade of the Grand Army back in 
“ The States.” 

I climbed over the rail of the tender and caught Jesse’s 
eye, and if you ever saw a delighted man, it was he. As the 
family went across the gangplank and onto the jetty our 
old friend swooped down on us. 

Ere long we were on our way toward the beautiful 
Shway Dagon pagoda, perhaps the most gorgeous and 
beautiful Buddhist temple in the world. Ancient tradi¬ 
tion gravely figures that the foundation was laid in 588 
B. C. The temple rises to imposing height, and is visible 
for miles around; seaward it is to be seen even from the 
Bay of Bengal, and that morning we had feasted our eyes 
on its effulgent golden dome long before the ship tied up 
at her mooring buoy. 

From a high terrace the pagoda rises and fines down to a 
narrow shaft and curves in slender grace to a tip some three 
hundred and seventy-five feet above the base line. 

Leaving our gharry, we walked along a wide street 
lined with distinctive Oriental buildings toward a broad 
flight covered by an elaborately carved canopy of teakwood 
resting on stone pillars. 

A little child ran toward us with roses in its small 
hand, and reached out the fragrant nosegay, with a salaam. 
In a moment the flowers were in my hand and an anna 
was in the little fist. Professor Smith then told me that 
the flowers were supposed to be an offering for a Buddhistic 
shrine. The tiny tad had more clothing than some of his 
cousins wore back in Ceylon and Calcutta. He was a 
Burmese, and his complexion! Imagine mixing copper and 
light drab and keeping the resultant clear and true and 
fresh, and you might have the tint of Burman childhood 
cheeks. 

Then we passed over a well-shaded landing and 
traversed farther heavenward up another wide flight pro¬ 
tected by a teakwood hood, arriving at another landing. 


IIO 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


where small booths were found. Brilliant flowers made the 
booths gay. Happy, innocent tykes smiled at us from the 
counters, and made the inevitable salaams. 

Little Joe gazed at the Burmese boys with delighted 
astonishment, and the Burmese boys gazed on him with 
delighted astonishment. A freckly-faced paleface boy with 
carrot hair was as amusing a novelty to them as little lumps 
of living copper were to Joe. 

Ascending with patience worthy the patient Guenther 
we gained the terrace platform in time and were informed 
that we were some one hundred and seventy-five feet above the 
base. We advanced from the garish tropical sunlight out¬ 
side to the shadowy interior of a shrine where we discerned 
a priest with a shaven head and bare feet who was clad in 
a yellow robe. The votary was on his knees, reciting in a 
strange tongue, which Professor Smith said was the Pali. 
The professor stated that the recital was in the nature of a 
confession, varied by prayer. Small candles were burning 
on an altar. Devotees from the laity were kneeling in the 
shadows. They were men of earnest and absorbed mien, 
clad in the humblest clothing. As we stood near the line 
of sunlight a priest came in his yellow robe, worn with the 
pride with which a Senator of Cicero’s time might have 
worn a toga. He knelt reverently with bare knee on the 
hard stone. In the twilight of the depths of the shrine 
amid the dark shadows rose the unshapely mass of a figure 
of Buddha, cross-legged, and with the fingers of equal 
length. Offerings of rice and roses were at irregular inter¬ 
vals on the floor. 

It was a strange scene. From the gloom we of the 
Western world emerged with a mixture of feelings, and 
for the time were subdued in spirit and expression. Some 
of us termed the scene weird, but that is not the word 
to picture the sight in that temple. The worship was to 
the Burmese there a vital worship, and they derived 
spiritual stimulus and undoubtedly went forth into that 
garish sunshine and the heat of the city, morally refreshed. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


I I I 


In the gloom and the mystery some of the voyagers saw 
reverence, and others saw' only idolatry and misbegotten 
fanaticism. But all saw devotion and earnestness of a 
strange kind. 

Around the base of the high central pagoda we saw 
shrine after shrine, many of them miniature pagodas. In 
one spot was a line of small temples, representing the seven 
days of the week; a devout Buddhist coming to the line 
is to select the one which stands for his natal day. 

In another spot rose a glittering shrine with a portico 
of great height with columns of dark-colored glass, and 
back under the roof was the figure of Buddha cast in 
gleaming brass. One of the small temples is specialized 
with figures of elephants. In another a tiny banyan tree 
is starting to spread its aerial roots. In a corner of the high 
city wall is a much larger banyan, and between two of its 
buttress roots some devotee has built a shrine, in a spirit 
not unlike, perhaps, that of an old-time Greek w r ho wor¬ 
shiped a naiad of the forest. 

It was a fascinating stroll, that trip around the great 
central pagoda in the morning, with Rangoon’s panorama 
below, spires, minarets, mosques, churches, and Oriental 
architecture stretching away from the foreground to the 
yellow river with its green islands and the buoyant tropical 
greenery beyond the middle distance merging into hazy 
horizon. 

High overhead in a golden cone, slender and blazing, 
gleamed and glistened that pagoda shaft, tapering to its three 
hundred and seventy feet toward mid-air, a dazzling 
spectacle. In the brilliant tropical sunlight it was the one 
central and supreme object for the whole of the range of 
the eye. 

A slim iron spire is the final culmination of the great 
tribute to Buddha, and supports a crown of gems reputed 
to be worth eighty thousand pounds. 

Portions of the shaft where the gold leaf were washing 
or disintegrating were being redecorated with leaf when we 
8 


112 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


were in Rangoon, and a bamboo staging was slowly 
ascending the lower curve toward the disturbed bents. 
Somehow the work reminded me of a like sight when similar 
repairs were being made to the gold leaf on the dome of the 
State Capitol of Connecticut some years ago. 



MRS. ALICE J. HARRIS 
In Charge of Ship Entertainments 

We had seen bamboo staging in different places in India. 
In fact we were informed that it was seldom that hammer 
and nails were used in the building of any aerial platform 
in the Far East. 

In the tour around the terrace we stopped to purchase 



AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST IIJ 

fruit and some of the seed* we saved with the intention of 
giving it to a friend at home who has a greenhouse. Popaya 
seed were stowed in a pocket against our return to the ship, 
where they were placed in a toy case of Joe’s. From the 
terrace we loitered down the almost interminable steps, 
casting lingering looks at the buoyant, living leafage and 
the low-roofed town, and at the uninviting creek which 
Kipling has described in “ Mandalay.” Near the base we 
entered a native bazaar and found the sales/zzezz to be women! 

And now permit me a digression, an intermezzo, if you 
please. The Burman is good-natured and amiable and 
indolent,— all of which is diplomatic for lazy and shif’les’, 
as we say in dear old New England. Mrs. Burman is also 
good-natured, but she is full of business. If a bit of jade is 
worth eight rupees, she asks twenty, and is liable to get 
eighteen for it, unless you comprehend the situation, and 
even then she is certain to get a good, fat fifteen, for she is 
a born bargainer, and can cut circles around even a good, 
old-fashioned Congregational deacon. 

Mrs. and M iss Burman have teeth like ivory, hair like 
ebony, and eyes of some Mongolian cast which bring to 
your memory romantic lines by Byron and songs of Tom 
Moore. They have complexions without ever a blemish 
and of a tint which w T e may have seen on Oriental china 
and costumes which mere man can only admire and describe 
as dreams in pink and mauve or ecru. 

Miss Burman may wear her feet bare, but frequently 
she is shod in marvelous sandals, sometimes in slippers which 
Queen Titania may have used when she drew her court in 
the moonlight of midsummer. 

Miss Burman is a living cameo and your eyes feast on 
daintiness and beauty and you are fully content when she 
shows that it requires fifteen rupees to do the duty of eight. 
That is, you are content, unless Wife is at hand the next 
moment. 

* The seeds were turned over to Clarence R. Sadd, of Burnside, Connec¬ 
ticut, on our return to God’s country ; they were planted in a greenhouse, 
but, alas ! never germinated. 



I 14 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

But to terminate the intermezzo and come back to earth, 
we purchased temple brasses, jade, toys, and knick-knacks 
of Miss Burman ere we fared forth into the sunlight and 
down a few hundred more steps and entered the gharry 
which conveyed us to Professor Smith’s home at the 
Baptist College. There we were welcomed by Mrs. Smith 
and her two young children. In a large, high-ceilinged 
dining-room tiffin was served, beginning with black rice and 
advancing through courses of native or English dishes to 
popaya and coffee. For the benefit of the uninitiated I 
might say that popaya is some wonderful kind of improved 
melon, armed and equipped with seeds which are in a class 
with pepper. 

Professor Smith showed to us a number of the buildings 
of the Rangoon Baptist College, beginning with the 
Cushing Memorial Hall, just completed, erected to the 
memory of the Reverend Doctor J. N. Cushing, a former 
president of the college. 

The site of the college is along a part of a broad laterite 
ridge, about fifty feet higher than the Rangoon River, in 
Athlone, a residential section of the city. Fine old trees 
rise around several of the buildings. A highway running 
through the grounds divides them into the west and the 
east compound. The land includes some twenty-seven acres. 

Cushing Hall is in the east compound. Its style is the 
English Renaissance modified to meet the Rangoon climate. 
Brick is used, with light red facings and cement dressings; 
the ceilings are of asbestos, the girders and pillars are of 
the finest steel, and the floors are in reinforced concrete. 
The roof is laid in red Marseilles tile. It is equipped 
throughout with electric lights and the auditorium has elec¬ 
tric fans, a very present blessing, as we joyfully admitted 
when we attended a rally there later in the day. The 
building has an entire frontage of three hundred and thirty- 
six feet, of which the memorial hall or auditorium has a 
frontage of one hundred. On either side of the hall is a 
classroom, and beyond either of these is a wing separated 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST I 15 

from the main structure by an arched driveway. One wing 
contains four lecture-rooms, the college library and reading- 
room, and the offices of the president and the treasurer. 
The other wing contains dormitories, a dining-room, and a 
social room for the use of day scholars when not in the 
classrooms. 

The furniture is of teakwood, and is from American 
patterns followed by the Chinese who made the furniture. 
The cost of the articles was nearly 10,000 rupees. The 
land is worth three times that and the cost of the building 
was 160,000 rupees. 

I have entered into some detail, because the college is a 
direct result of the work of missionaries past and present 
in Rangoon. Christian work in Burmah’s capital has met 
with its ups and downs; it has in the long run been won¬ 
derfully successful, and the growth of the work is shown by 
the establishment of a college which would be a credit to 
some of our own states at home, and by the numbers and the 
enthusiasm and standing of the converts. It would not be 
going too far to name Rangoon a Paradise of the Missionary. 

The money for the Cushing building was raised in part 
by native Christians, in part by gifts from Baptists in the 
United States, and in part by grants of educational money 
from the government of India. 

The start of early mission work for Rangoon may be 
said to trace back to February 6, 1812, and to Salem in the 
Old Bay State. On that day one Adoniram Judson was 
ordained as a Congregational minister. Becoming a 
Baptist, Judson thrilled with the missionary spirit, and 
sailed for Burmah, while it was still a wild, strange, and 
unknown land of savage tribes, ruled by a half-barbaric 
king who was hostile to all white foreigners. It was in 
such unpromising environment that young Judson began 
a work destined to immortalize his name and to lead on 
through shadow and storm and distress to golden results. 

Soon after his arrival trouble arose wdth the English, 
who were encroaching, and Judson was, like early mis- 


Il6 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

sionaries in the apostolic times, cast into prison. The mis¬ 
sionaries were at work translating the Bible in Burman. 
At one time the manuscript was in danger, and it was hidden 
in a pillow and thus saved from destruction. 

When Judson started his work, Ko Thah Byu was the 
leader of a wild robber band of Karens back in the forest 
region. He was converted, and was baptized in 1828, 
becoming a remarkable evangelist. 

Later days in the mission history of Burmah also con¬ 
tain much that is savage and cruel. One of the thrilling 
stories deals with a tribe in the remote northern mountains, 
near the Chinese boundary, to which caravans in those times 
paid tribute. It was a half-barbaric tribe with fastnesses 
among the almost inaccessible summits, and it thrived in 
its lawless and primitive way. It is related that one of the 
wild chiefs heard of the medical skill of a missionary and 
sent down a band with coolies and ponies to escort him to 
the hills for a short stay. The missionary made good. He 
cured a favorite retainer of the chief, bringing him back to 
health and strength when pneumonia was making a strong 
bid for the man. After that the missionaries had a square 
deal as far as that chief was concerned. 

In 1878 the Reverend W. H. Roberts went to the hills 
as a permanent missionary. On his journey inland he was 
informed that King Thebaw had just put to death some 
eighty-four of the royal brothers and sisters. The mis¬ 
sionary’s journey up the Irrawaddy River was made in a 
small steamboat. Before fifty miles were made the steamer 
grounded on a bar, and after bucking the sand for three 
days the craft gave it up, and then Mr. Roberts made the 
remainder of the distance in a native boat. 

For twelve years he labored in northern Burmah amid 
discouragement and hardship, but in the main achieving 
success. At one time his compound, which was just out¬ 
side the east gate of Bhamo, was captured by Chinese 
invaders, but the men with yellow faces spared the family 
with the white faces, in consequence of which clemency he 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 117 

was looked on by some of the Burmese as a traitor. At 
another period in the troubled times he was frequently fired 
upon, and one night his house was burned. In the course 
of his labors two of the schoolhouses which he built were 
burned by lawless opponents of the faith. It was amid 
scenes and contentions such as these that the early missions 
in northern Burmah were established. But at the end of 
the twelve years Mr. Roberts had at his home station 
seventy members and property valued at twenty thousand 
rupees. This was back in 1891. 

From beginnings such as these, the Baptists of Burmah 
have gone forward with faith and courage till they have 
divided their field in the ancient kingdom into eighteen dis¬ 
tricts. They have in their churches some seventy thousand 
members and in the Sunday Schools nearly twenty-five 
thousand children. The baptisms in 1908 were 3,314 in 
number, and the work is reaching over into the kingdom 
of Siam. What wonder that Rangoon is called a Mis¬ 
sionary’s Paradise? 

It is a pleasure to hark back for a moment to the college. 
The institution is an outgrowth of a mission high school. 
In the high school stage it was qualified to present candi¬ 
dates for the entrance examinations of the University of 
Calcutta. In 1894 it obtained affiliation with the univer¬ 
sity as a First Arts College. In 1909 it advanced to full 
college rank, and it teaches a four years’ curriculum and 
leads to the degree of Bachelor of Arts. When we visited 
it the registered students were fifty-eight in number, and 
the indications for the next year promised a much larger 
registration. Two American scholarships are offered, one 
by William Jennings Bryan and the other by a Christian 
Endeavor Society in Berkeley, California. 

On a Sunday afternoon we were driven in a gharry to 
the Cushing assembly hall to attend a Christian Endeavor 
rally, at which delegations were present from every Baptist 
church in Rangoon. Soon after our arrival every seat in 
the hall was occupied, dark-tinted young men and women 


118 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

began lining up along the walls. As the service started 
a delegation of Burmese schoolboys arrived, entering in 
columns of twos, raven-haired little copper-hued fellows 
with sparkling eyes, most of them wearing short jackets, 
trousers, and slippers, but a few of them being bare-footed. 

Every seat was pre-empted, and for a moment consterna¬ 
tion reigned among the little lads, but in the twinkling of 
an eye a businesslike Chinaman with a cue appeared from 
nowhere in particular and whisked down a roll of matting 
which he spread on the floor in the lee of the reading desk. 
And there, double the number of Eugene Aram’s “ four 
and twenty happy boys ” squatted with legs crossed in the 
shadow of the platform. Back of them, tier upon tier upon 
tier of girls and boys ascended in the amphitheatre, children 
from the dark mahogany of the Hindu and the even darker 
mahogany of the melancholy Tamil, some of which race we 
had seen in Ceylon, to the bronze of Karen and the clean, 
clear Mongolian copper of the gay-hearted Burman. On 
our drive we had passed one of the many delegations, a 
band of little girls in gay costumes, pretty pink and mauve, 
and short half-sandals, somewhat like sandals which we 
later saw in Japan, except that they were closer to the 
ground. 

In that sea of shining dark faces and bared heads little 
clusters of white topees and straw hats showed the presence 
of ladies from the ship. They were not unlike surf in a 
dark sea. 

Among the speakers who addressed the gathering was 
Miss Alice Judson of Stratford, Connecticut, a grand¬ 
daughter of Adoniram Judson, who was to serve in a mis¬ 
sion in Japan. The Reverend Francis E. Clark was 
another. The addresses of these speakers were in English, 
and their words were translated sentence by sentence by an 
interpreter whose father was Chinese and whose mother 
was Burmese. 

A Tamil orchestra sat at one end of the platform. 
Three of the grave, quiet, dark men had strange looking 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 119 

instruments. Imagine bass viols crossed with guitars and 
you may have an idea of the instruments on which these 
Tamil brothers played. Another of the musicians had a 
violin. In front of this orchestra sat little boys and girls 
of the Tamil lineage, with sombre visages of deep mahogany 
and mien of melancholy. The dark musicians played a 
weird and yet tuneful chant, and the children sang a 
plaintive rendering of the eighty-third psalm. The service 
included the reading of a chapter of the Old Testament in 
Burmese and a prayer in another native language. To con¬ 
clude the service the Doxology was sung in English, Karen, 
Burmese, Tamil, and Talegu, concurrently. It was a pic¬ 
turesque termination to a worship which was even more 
novel and interesting than that which had been witnessed 
in the Methodist church in Madeira. 

In the course of our stay in Rangoon we drove out in a 
gharry to a timberyard on a muddy, dismal creek, and mar¬ 
veled at the sight of an elephant as a hauler of wood. A 
huge pachyderm with one of his tusks broken bore on his 
back a little brown man with a big, bright steel hook, with 
which the directions were conveyed to the beast. Little 
Joe was completely delighted when he saw the great animal 
curve his trunk around a log or a teakwood plank and lift 
it to a carrier operated by machinery which transported it 
to a sawmill. Occasionally a plank was out of position or 
was wedged in between others, and then the beast used his 
full-length tusk as a lever and obtained a good purchase 
under it. To some of his admirers he seemed to have nearly 
as much gray matter as the man on his back. 

Ere long came the hour in the late afternoon when we 
were to leave Rangoon. We drove slowly to the jetty, 
gazing at the wayside life, life in a strange out-of-the-way 
city on the morningside of the world, where the Aryan race 
was born. At one moment I was interested in a water- 
carrier with earthen jars slung from a bamboo pole 
balanced over his shoulder. Chinamen passed us in black 
skull caps, loose jackets, and zouave baggy trousers. A 


120 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


flock of goats and kids straggled by. A sleek, small, cream- 
colored bullock was drawing a cart with one pair of wheels 
and a long, slatted body. Along the sidewalks were knots 
of Burmese men and women, of a reduced Mongolian type, 
cheek-bones less conspicuous than the original, and the eyes 
less slanting. Most of the men were in lungyis, or short 



THE BEST STEWARDESS IN THE 
world 


skirts of colored silk, gathered in a queer way around the 
loins. The women were in jackets and lungyis or temaines, 
open skirts of richly figured or embroidered silk. Nearly 
every daughter of Eve wore jewelry to excess, but genuine 
jewelry, mainly jade, but with some silver and gold. Jade 
is found in quantity in Burmah, and is considered “ lucky.” 

It was Rangoon’s winter; yet that winter’s day was 
such that most of the Burmese women were carrying fans. 






AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 121 

The fans were of gay and bizarre, even grotesque patterns. 
Occasionally a parasol was hoisted, a gorgeous thing in a 
riotous medley of maudlin color. 

It was a laughing, good-humored throng, living in the 
moment that passed. The people were in an indolent 
Mardi Gras spirit, the spirit without the energy, a spirit 
they carry from cradle to coffin. . It is this contented, happy- 
go-lucky, devil-may-care attitude toward life which has led 
some of the English to call them the Irish of the East. 


CHAPTER X. 


SIX HUNDRED BAPTISMAL CERTIFICATES. 


I N the first dusk of a December evening the ship stood 
away from the city and down the Irrawaddy River. 
As night was shutting down she began to feel the 
swell from the Bay of Bengal. It was a memorable 
sail down the Malay coast, by night and in the broad 
tropical sunlight, toward Singapore, the strange and 
strangely beautiful city on the island at the tip of the 
Malay Peninsula. 

Singapore lies where the courses of long voyaging ships 
in the Far East converge, as spokes meet in the hub. If 
you look at one of the maps which show ships’ routes in 
those waters you might think of fashion pictures which were 
made in your grandmothers’ time, when a pinched waist 
with radiating curves above and flaring lines below was 
the mold of form. Even so Singapore is the pinched 
strait whence arcs of great circles curve and flare away. 
Ships from every important maritime nation follow, out 
or in, those lines. Ships, too, from little nations in Asia 
and Oceanica, about which few but sailors and children of 
the Wanderlust know, enter and clear at Singapore. 

Great steamships which cost millions of dollars, tramps 
and wildcats which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, 
brigs and brigantines and Occidental wind-jammers which 
mean lean tens of thousands, and junks which mean bare 
thousands, and sampans which mean scant hundreds are in 
the shifting, continuous play which crowds the stage of 
Singapore Roads. The latest on the stage may be flying 
the crosses of St. Andrew and St. George, or the tri-color 
of France, or the black, white, and red of the German 
Empire, or the rising sun of imperial Japan, or any one of 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


23 


twenty other flags. There is a charm in viewing the pic¬ 
ture which the giant scene-shifter, Commerce, presents. It 
is a scene which has the fascination of uncertainty and the 
education which a real spectacle on a real stage offers. 

What most interested observing travelers among the 
party as we neared the anchorage were the numbers of 
junks and sampans and the quantity of brigantines. In our 
home waters brigantines are almost a novelty, schooners 
having almost a prescriptive right for the carrying of our 
commerce, as far as sails are concerned. We were informed 
that a century ago the island was barely inhabited, and 
that in 1819 the first British factory in Singapore was 
established; that in 1824 the sultan of Johore sold the 
island for what in American money is some sixty-seven 
thousand dollars and a life annuity of twenty-seven thou¬ 
sand dollars. It would be interesting to see the figures 
which an actuary could evolve as to what the payment 
w T ould produce now and here. At any rate the realty, alone, 
in Singapore means millions and many millions of dollars, 
many times over. 

We were informed, too, about the climate, and were 
assured that it was “ uniformly serene.” It was told to 
us that the water was disturbed only by swells from distant 
tempests in the China Seas or the Bay of Bengal. 

The city is about seventy-six miles from the equator. 
It has a sea front of about six miles, and a population some¬ 
where about a quarter of a million, the exact number being 
difficult to obtain because of the unwillingness of the 
Chinese inhabitants to give correct information about 
themselves. 

On the landing stage an American missionary met us 
and distributed slips containing a list of the Christian 
churches in the city and a small store of information about 
them and the Christian work in Singapore, information 
which no guide-book included. In fact, the encyclopedias, 
too, had little information about the city which was later 
than 1904. 


124 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


We found the city to be well paved and well built, 
many of the buildings having been erected only five or six 
years. We went in carriages to the station, and then in 
special trains to the narrow water which separates the 
island from the tip of the peninsula. It was through a 
variety of scenery that the trains bore us, well-kept bunga¬ 
lows and lawns and grounds at first greeting the party, 
and the land then insensibly merging into matted forests 
and swampy woodland which were almost jungles. 

A small steamer ferried us across the half mile of salt 
water and landed us in the territory of the sultan. Next 
came the inevitable gee whiz for the rickshaws which were 
in line along the esplanade, and after that the ride behind 
sweating coolies to the palace of the sultan, at the crest of 
a low hill, a mile away. The sultan was not visible to 
speak for himself, but we were told that he was the pos¬ 
sessor of three wives and also had in the inventory some 
three hundred wives by the left hand. 

Entraining, we returned to Singapore, and went in 
victorias to the Raffles Hotel, named after Sir Stamford 
Raffles, who, more than any one other person, caused the 
founding of the modern city. 

Pardon me for a moment’s digression about Sir 
Stamford. He was born at sea, off the Island of Jamaica, 
in 1781, and at the age of fourteen entered business in the 
East India House. He mastered the Malay language and 
gained the notice of Lord Minto, governor-general of India. 
Java having been taken from the Dutch, Raffles was 
apppointed lieutenant- governor. On the restoration of the 
island, he returned to England and was knighted. Three 
years later he caused the founding of Singapore as an out¬ 
post of a commercial nature to counteract the influence of 
the Dutch in this part of the world. He set sail for home 
in 1824, but the ship caught fire, and a natural history col¬ 
lection, drawings, and notes valued at one hundred thousand 
dollars were lost. 

A lady confided to me that she was disappointed in 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 125 

Singapore as a shopping place; against that a man said that 
he was greatly impressed by the commercial activity of the 
city. It is my own view that each was right; that the dry- 
goods shops carry little that visitors value as souvenirs, and 
that the city deals in the more substantial and heavy articles 
and products which are needed for home use. 

I find the following in Pauline’s note-book and purloin 
it, speculating as to what will be her remark when she sees 
it in print: 

u Although the sun’s rays are so strong the women wear no 
hats. They work and walk unprotected from the heat, and do not 
so much as feel it.” 

In the afternoon we took another ride, and visited the 
botanical gardens, which are especially beautiful, but with 
the memory of the garden of Perideniya fresh with us the 
really splendid garden of Singapore made but little 
impression. 

poseidon’s call. 

As I have written, Singapore is but seventy-six miles 
from the equator, and when we sailed from the city in the 
evening it was figured that about midnight the good ship 
would cross the line. At two bells in the first watch there 
was a commotion on the forecastle, and two strange-looking 
objects made their way to the port promenade deck, where 
the captain was conversing with ladies in the brilliant 
tropical moonlight. The visitors were in garb such as eye 
rarely chances upon. They addressed the burly and jovial 
mariner in German, and announced that they had been dis¬ 
patched by the lord of the water to say that he, with royal 
train, would be pleased to call on the captain and the 
tourists at two o’clock in the afternoon, inasmuch as the 
hour of midnight was inconvenient, and that the rite of 
baptism would be observed for the benefit of all on board 
who had not gone that way before. 

A number of the children who were still abroad as late 
as nine o’clock kept sharp eyes on the two heralds as they 


126 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


retired, but just then the moon was buried behind flying 
wrack and the little fry did not discover where the men 
disappeared to. 

Young couples went forward after the messengers from 
Poseidon left and remarked, ere they started, that they 
were to watch for the equator. It was commented upon 
that they were the same scientists who had searched for 
the Southern Cross when the ship was sailing the Red 
Sea; it will be remembered that one young son of science 
on that occasion hunted for half an hour, attempting to find 
the Southern Cross in the eye of his lovely companion. 

All through the next morning the children on the 
Cleveland were in a flutter of excitement. The older 
children, those who had attained the mature years of eleven 
or twelve, were busy in making it evident to Little Joe and 
to the little fairy from Louisville, who were eight and six, 
respectively, that direful things were about to occur. The 
older ones, with the cruelty of children, filled the two 
little minds with apprehension, till Joe w r ent to Mr. Clark, 
the organizer-in-chief of the tour, and begged protection. 
The little fellow had been assured by a lad of twelve that 
the sovereign of the sea would call for Joe and duck him 
in the water one minute for each year of Joe’s age. 

In like manner, the little fairy from Louisville was told 
that she was to be ducked till her hair ribbons would run. 
Joe and Mattalea were solemnly promised that they would 
be “ drown-ded.” At first the parents of the two tots paid 
little attention to these developments, but the good, benevo¬ 
lent grandmother of Mattalea was distressed at the girl’s 
terror, and said that it was “ a shame.” 

Joe is arriving at that age of iconoclasm when he grows 
skeptical about Santy Claus, and for a spell he was not 
indisposed to classify Poseidon in the same watch as Santy; 
and so I was ready to let him have a bit of a scare, that 
he might return to faith in the children’s saint at the same 
time that he was learning by physical evidence of the 
existence of Poseidon. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 127 

Shortly before two o’clock the word was passed quietly 
aft to me that the King of the Line was arriving over the 
starboard bow and was asking for the youngest on board. 
I immediately informed Joe and Mattalea that it was his 
gracious royal will to receive them first of all the tourists. 
It must be confessed that Joe was unenthusiastic. He 
loitered, till I took his hand. The honored sire of Mattalea 
took the tiny fist of that little fairy and the two children 
went forward in tow of their fathers, followed by the 
photographer of the ship, Mr. Raven. The boy and the 
girl were each silent and inclined to commune with their 
own thoughts. 

A screen cloth had been stretched across the forecastle 
deck, forward of the crew’s galley, to shut off profane eyes 
from the robing quarters of Poseidon’s royal train. It hung 
a few feet forward of the big forecastle breakwater, which 
is eighteen inches high. The children hung back and were 
loath to step over the breakwater, but step they did when 
urged. They balked at progressing beyond the canvas cur¬ 
tain of mystery, but finally consented, but scarcely in that 
mental attitude which makes a virtue of necessity. They 
moseyed slowly around the edge of the screen in tow of 
their fathers. 

The selfsame moment Joe emitted a yell of terror and 
Mattalea a scream. Joe turned to flee, but his father’s 
grasp was like iron at his wrist. Mattalea, scared half to 
death, yet stood her ground bravely. 

“Why, Joe!” Mr. Raven exclaimed to the little lad. 
“What’s the matter? I’m ashamed of you. Did you ever 
see a sailor cry? ” 

This was a sore point with Joe, for he had been am¬ 
bitious to be a sailor or a motorman when he grew up, 
and he had been taught that a sailor was brave and the 
noblest work of God. 

“ Yes,” said he between his yells, “ and he was twice 
as big as you.” 

Partly led and partly dragged, Joe was conducted to the 
royal knee, and in a moment he had regained his composure. 

9 


128 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

“ That isn’t Poseidon,” he declared. “ That’s the 
quartermaster and that’s Mike behind him.” 

You can’t trick Joe about Mike, for Mike is the steward 
of the swimming pool. 

The Lord of the Seven Seas was six feet three inches 
tall, and was bristling with immense mustachios of fierce 
(rope yarn nearly a foot long. A beard of fully four feet 
in length made a warlike shield for his immense chest and 
enormous corporation; it was made of frazzled rope. In 



BAPTISMAL FONT 


one mighty hand he grasped a trident with a shaft eight 
feet long, a flaming red socket another foot in length, and 
its three teeth gilded in brilliant chrome. A belligerent 
tunic of blood-red flannel descended to the royal thighs. 
At his right hand his queen stood in piratical black with 
a crown as assertive as a half-peck measure, and serrated 
with cruel golden teeth. Two black slaves were at the 
king’s left, with gleaming bared knives in their hands, 
blood-red putty stuck on the knife points. 

What wonder that Joe was apprehensive? 

The photographer led Joe to the Lord of the Ocean. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


29 


He placed Joe s hand in the royal fist, which was the size 
of a Westphalia ham. In a jiffy Mattalea was smiling 
up into the royal face. Then the camera clicked. For a 
spell I wondered whether a stewardess was assuming the 
part of Poseidon’s queen. The complexion had feminine 
color and there was certainly buxomness to the figure; but 
when my glance fell to the feet all doubt vanished. She 
was a man! 

The first officer formed the procession for the march aft 
from the forecastle head. The right of the column was 
taken by the ship’s band, tricked out in a maudlin, errant 
mixture which made the street of Cairo seem a monastery. 
Scarlet skirts with ermine facings and canary buttons of 
heroic size were merely a starter. One apostle of music 
was radiant in a white spiketail with angel sleeves puffed 
in black and lapels of vermilion decorated with diagonal 
bands of copper paint. Take a manufacturer of kaleido¬ 
scopes out to a midnight lunch, and to mince pie, sliced 
tomatoes, and lobster salad, add Neapolitan ice-cream, and 
you might hope, if you were lucky, that when he was at 
the height of his nightmare his dream would give him a 
faint idea of the jumbled medley of the band’s raiment. 

But the band was only the prelude to the parade. Two 
Nubian slaves with silver armbands of pure sheet tin and 
gold nose rings of virgin brass and palm-fiber ballet skirts 
of true rope yarn were an introduction to valiant soldiers, 
the like of whom were never seen before on that or any 
other equator. Two of these warriors were gorgeous in 
Prussian Uhlan helmets with nodding plumes; sailor’s rain¬ 
coats faced with green and painted in copper were a small 
part of the rest of the uniform. Their arms were papier- 
mache swords. Two other soldiers were tribesmen from 
Thibet and they bore bows and arrows. Yet another 
warrior was resplendent in a rainbow busby, which out¬ 
rivaled the double bow which signalized our departure 
from Madeira. Auto goggles and raincoats completed 
his uniform. 


130 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


Short and squat, with a side elevation like that of a 
Bartlett pear, the boatswain helped your digestion the 
moment you cast eyes on him. His pot belly was a 
poem. The jolly bos’n wore with great dignity a “ choker ” 
which might fit a bull calf. He wore it as a woman alights 
from a trolley car, ’hind side before. With it was a tie 
of Chinese vermilion, a yard long. A spiketail of Canton 
flannel concluded the costume, for the rotund bos’n was 
bare-legged and bare-footed. 

Now, what is that word which comes next after pen¬ 
tagonal, when you are advancing in plane geometry? It 
would describe the six-sided mortar-board which the chap¬ 
lain supported. The cap was black and all of the chaplain’s 
rig was black, fit color for such a pirate. Black, too, was 
the color of the book which the chaplain carried, a book 
a cloth yard square and sprent with Malay and German 
characters. 

Tamils and Hindus followed, armored with tin shields 
and horrid with grave-bones and skulls. Egyptians, spears- 
men, and head-hunters did not exhaust the jumbled medley. 

The officer gave an order in jaw-cracking German, 
and the band crashed out with a will in a blare which jarred 
the equator. The feet, shod and bare, marked time, and 
then the column blazed its path aft, the colors endangering 
hundreds of optic nerves and bidding fair to make business 
for the opticians in Batavia, the next port. 

The procession threaded the main deck, dived below the 
poop, circumnavigated the grill room, and came out on the 
waist, to the throb of the war drum and the brave crash 
and bang of the hard-worked instruments. In due season 
it emerged on the after hatch -cover, where the captain 
welcomed the royal visitor. 

Poseidon shot guttural Teutonic thunder at the captain, 
and proceeded to decorate him with a gorgeous cross and 
order. Then he presented to officers, for whom he called 
by name, similar orders and badges of marvelous size. 

One of the tourists, a popular lady, was called to the 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


31 



coign of the hatch cover, two of the soldiers escorting her 
up the steps to the chair in such case made and provided. 
A minion with a long, lank, lean stovepipe hat advanced 
with an atomizer of the size of a three-gallon bottle, from 
which he lightly shot a spray into the dainty lady’s face. 
The recipient made an amused grimace of w r ry dismay, but 


THE TRIAL 

appeared to enjoy the comedy. She coyly turned her face 
the other way, wTile the stovepipe barber continued the 
initiation. Then the band split the air and her ladyship, 
wife of a New York physician, escaped. A stream of 
ladies ascended the steps, sat in the chair, and w^ere similarly 
initiated. Pauline w r as in the stream. 

In time a sailor was invited to the hatch. He was 







132 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

escorted to the rail and the kitchen pipe barber dipped a 
scrubbing brush in a big bucket and lathered the tar’s phiz 
with soap-suds of low degree. Next the barber scraped and 
scraped with a papier mache razor. That for a beginning, 
for next he grabbed a pair of scissors and snipped at the 
tar’s blond hair. Encouraging himself, he combed the hair 
with a rake. As this toilet was advancing, the two Nubian 
slaves with ballet skirts quietly slid into the tank of shallow 
water beneath the rail. As the combing concluded two 
black bucks on the hatch garroted the sailor and whirled 
him heels over head into the pool. As his head rose they 
ducked him blithely, and as he staggered to his feet, sput¬ 
tering and dazed, a hellion turned a deck hose on him, with 
the aid of the Nubians. 

All of this was to the liking of the spectators, who sat 
to the number of nearly six hundred on stools and steamer 
chairs, or stood on different overlooking decks or on awn¬ 
ings and timberheads and woodwork. Some of the young 
men had ascended far up the shrouds of the masts near by 
and were standing on the ratlines. 

For a quarter of an hour it was the crew’s period. 
Many were called and all were shaved. One husky young 
fellow came with open breast, hirsute, and him the barber 
lathered far down his chest and half-way down his back, 
the spectators applauding in paroxyms of laughter and the 
young Teuton sparring the lather from his eyes and sput¬ 
tering it from his mouth. 

Then came the time for men from the passenger list. 
A young fellow came up in a white drill suit. Lather was 
plastered over his collar and his natty silk tie, and he was 
capsized into the pool. As he rose a stream from the deck 
hose smote him full in the face. He shook his head and 
wiped the water. Then he nodded gaily to a girl in the 
gallery who was gazing at him in two minds. 

A popular clergyman was called and he inadvertently 
ascended to the guilotine with his watch in his pocket. 
Into the tank went he, with the watch, the garroters being 
no clairvoyants. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


133 


A little girl was called by name and tripped up the 
short ladder to the hatch cover. She was sprayed. Then, 
the consent of her father having been obtained, she was 
gently lowered into the pool. First she yelled and then 
she giggled, and the spectators went wild in amusement. 
The baptism made the little girl a heroine for all time 
to come. 

While the merrymaking was at its height a few light 
drops began to fall and sorne^ of the passengers raised 
umbrellas. They saw an unclouded sky and fell to won¬ 
dering whether a rainbow was to appear. Then the drops 
came thick and fast and sharp-eyed observers saw a line of 
sailors far up in the shrouds at work with a line of hose 
with a reducer at the nozzle. As they dodged this stream, 
a stream came from another line from another mast. 

With riotous screams of pure, unalloyed joy the crowd 
broke for protection from the ratline birds. Majors and 
colonels of trade with names of power in their home towns 
yelled as if at a football game. Unbended financial terrors 
grew twenty years younger. Dowagers were as kittenish 
as a high school girl. They lifted up their skirts and fled 
for the grill or even the smoking-room, any refuge in a 
storm. Ancient virgins relaxed and laughed in unmaidenly 
screams. Young girls pealed out more music than temple 
bells in Rangoon made in a week. Young fellows turned 
their livers over, and the children shouted for dear life. 
It was a carnival of wild laughter gone crazy in a pande¬ 
monium of sport and enjoyment. 

The pool was meant for the few exemplars and the deck 
hose was reserved for the body general, was the baptismal 
font for the general mass. Some who were dry at first went 
out into the open, on learning the symbolic meaning, and 
received consecrating showers on their linen or drill or 
flannels. 

When the sport was completed and sailors were remov¬ 
ing the tank, the purser served out from his office baptismal 
certificates in the shape of elaborately illuminated sheets 


134 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


with a startling picture of Poseidon rising from the briny 
blue. The German conveyed the following meaning: 

We, Poseidon, the only son of Chronos, Prince Trident, lawful 
ruler of the violet high '.eas, earth-girdler and earth-shaker, havi 
most graciously permitted the earth-born * * * * on board of our 
friendly Cleveland to pass carefully over our equator. This, in 
our sea law, declared equator-christening, is appropriately done. 
The christened child bears in this region, according to custom, the 
sea name of , which he or she much bear in joy 

or sorrow in our reign. 

Poseidon. 

Little Joe’s name which he must bear in joy or sorrow 
(let us hope in joy) in the reign of the good giant Poseidon 
is Seekalb. 





CHAPTER XI. 
DUTCH TREATMENT. 


J AVA was our next destination, Java the peerless, 
“ The Pearl of the Orient.” At the throat of the 
island we came across a reminder of the Home¬ 
land, an islet named Onrust in the same year in which 
was built the tiny Onrust, first of all decked crafts to be 
launched by white hand in what is now New York, built 
and launched by fine old Adraien Block, one of the most 
adventurous and daring of the Dutch explorers who 
visited the Western world in the opening years of the seven¬ 
teenth century, the Onrust, “ Untiring,” germ of the 
shipping of New York. 

Passing the islet the ship anchored in the harbor of 
Tandjong Priok, the port of Batavia, capital of the island 
and of the colony. In the harbor we saw the horizontal 
red, white, and blue of the mother country, the Netherlands, 
Holland, flying from staff and masthead. 

Special trains conveyed us from the port to Weltevreden, 
the upper town of the capital, landing us at the Koning- 
splein station. The station platform was crowded with a 
friendly and curious throng, children making over half the 
number welcoming the Americans on detraining. It 
seemed as if on every lip were the words “ good morning,” 
which we subsequently were told had been taught to the 
children in the Batavian schools. There were children 
big, children small, children white, brown, yellow, and 
ivory black, and somehow the “ good morning ” had a 
quaint as well as hospitable ring from lips used to good 
old Dutch or Malay or Chinese or Javanese. 

Of course there was a gee whiz,— from the cars to the 


136 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

carriages awaiting us in the squares on the other side of 
the station. Mr. Globe Trotter, Mrs. Trotter, and the 
little T’s made out into the open as if the devil were hot on 
their trail. We found a few victorias, a few small barges, 
and nearly two hundred vehicles of the dos-a-dos construc¬ 
tion. The dos-a-dos is a small two-wheeled gharry, 
slightly larger than two rickshaws, were they to be tele¬ 
scoped. It is drawn by a toy pony of perhaps five hundred 
and fifty pounds avoidupois and perhaps the size of a year¬ 
ling heifer. The driver faces forward and the tourists face 
sideways or aft. 


THE LAW OF GRAVITY 



A tale was told about one of our party, a goodly physi¬ 
cian, who, like General Hancock, was a good man weighing 
two hundred and fifty pounds. His driver regarded him 
with much dubiety, and was minded to secure a different 
fare, but the beloved physician sidled edgewise into the 
dos-a-dos, and the Javanese cracked his whip and the pony 
started with a tremendous upward strain on the belly girth. 
At the first thank-you-marm the physician jounced up, and 
his rebound jounced the pony in such a wise that the center 
of gravity went the physician’s way. The shafts pointed 
like two telescopes upward at an angle of forty-five degrees. 
The pony was suspended in mid-air with his legs wriggling; 
pointed ears, starting eyes, and protesting muzzle conveying 





AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 137 

equine disapproval of the indignity. Thereafter the physi¬ 
cian rode on the driver’s seat and the driver on the 
tourist’s seat. 

At every corner were knots of Dutch colonists, sturdy, 
large-limbed, and large-trunked men with friendly and 
rotund faces, smiling little, but gravely respectful. With 
them were little children who tossed their tiny hands and 
waved American flags or caps or handkerchiefs, and yelled 
“ good morning!” as if the word were a hurrah. Some 
of the serious fathers would occasionally unbend and gravely 
wave handkerchiefs for a fleeting moment. 

It was an ovation given in a manner which was new 
to us, and all the more pleasant because of its individuality. 
To tell the plain, unvarnished truth, little attention had 
been paid to us at any port thus far in our trip, with the 
possible exception of Funchal, where a number of American 
flags had been displayed in honor of our advent. In the 
British ports the Englishmen had bent on us coolly aloof 
stares and in Colombo some had shown semi-hostile feeling. 
But once out of British soil and in hospitable Batavia we 
were made to feel welcome, and doubly welcome. The 
reception then and later in the day warmed the cockles of 
our hearts. 

We rode along the streets of a Spotless Town, over 
pavements nearly clean enough for the spreading of table 
linen for tiffin. Some of the streets I might liken to 
billiard tables for their smoothness. It was a semi-subur¬ 
ban, or at any rate, a residential section, if urban, along 
which we fared. Beautiful bungalows and villas stood back 
from the streets, embowered amid palms and dense, tropical 
foliage, with many buoyant specimens of an unfamiliar 
tree with blazing scarlet blooms of imperial size islanded 
in the spreading sea of green. It was a scene which brought 
to memory Miss Scidmoore’s description of Java as “ the 
peerless gem in that splendid empire of Insulinde which 
winds about the equator like a garland of emeralds.” 

Most of the dwellings are of two-story height, or a 


138 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

story and a half,* with a wide second-story piazza over a 
broad driveway and great jalousies shading the piazza or, 
more properly, veranda. The walls are painted a brilliant 
and ofttimes glossy white. Palms nod over the roofs; 
masses of well-ordered greenery are at each side. Usually 
there are broad intervals between the dwellings. 

The drive led along one side of the Koningsplein, where 
Malay boys were at play. One of the games was a curious 
kind of football. It was a small wickerwork ball which 
the youngsters toed. Among the onlookers were Dutch 
girls, lasses born, we were told, in the city, children of the 
first generation of settlers from Rotterdam. They were 
fine looking lasses, broad of beam, of liberal height and 
gracious avoirdupois. Their waist lines were indeterminate, 
for they wore a kind of glorified Mother Hubbard. Their 
complexions were marvels, not unlike molasses candy. They 
were good to see, and kindly, but discreet, in their manner. 

We were conveyed to what in our own section of the 
Homeland would rank as a species of trolley park, but 
was described to us as the special garden of the Hotel 
Nederlanden, the Kebon Binatang. 

Alighting from our dos-a-dos we saw at the garden 
gate a knot of male Javanese dancers, who were hard at 
work at a wonderful act and, withal, were dignified as 
senators, and barely blinked when a battery of cameras was 
turned upon them. 

Beyond, was a bamboo booth with a stage on which eight 
luscious Javanese girls in native costumes were giving a 
picturesque dance. Those costumes! They were ample, 
but not excessive. One girl was gay in a scarlet bodice and 
a black and gold skirt, or, at least, drapery. Other cos¬ 
tumes were similar. From the hips of each dancer 
depended wide strips of orange gauze. The girls were 
giving a dance describing the deadly cobra, his graceful 
glide, the coil and his hiss, and there were art and grace in 
the dancing. At the moment I first saw them each girl 
was rotating an elbow joint till it seemed as if she would 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


139 


dislocate it. She was curving forearm and slim fingers to 
represent the coil and was emitting a hiss which was a true 
reproduction of the cobra’s warning. 

Outside the booth native musicians sat cross-legged on 
the ground. Some banged at tom-toms. Some biffed 
wooden drums; scalp a watermelon at each end, disem¬ 
bowel it, transmute the rind into a hard wood, and stretch 
sheepskin over the opening and you might achieve a resultant 
which would resemble one of the drums. 

Back of the booth was a merry-go-round for the children 
of the party, and Little Joe made a sprint as soon as he 
cast eyes on it. 

Farther in the grove was another booth. Instead of 
dancers, actors held the stage in this, a company which was 
giving an old-time Javanese play in highly exaggerated 
costume. The company enjoyed the best reputation in the 
Thespian line in the island, and had played before the 
viceroy of India, when he visited Java recently. Each actor 
was in mask and was equipped with a grotesque extension 
supposed to be the tail of a dragon. Again the battery of 
cameras unlimbered and snapped. 

Tiffin was served in a giant, open-air pavilion with a 
floor nearly as large as Madison Square Garden. Stanchions, 
pillars, and beams were decorated with Old Glory and with 
the red, white, and blue of Holland. The orange of the 
old country was also displayed in the decorations. 

As the party went for the seats a band of twenty-seven 
pieces played “ The Star Spangled Banner,” and in a 
moment tourists were waving topees, handkerchiefs, and 
tempestuous napkins, and the air was rent with cheers. The 
band played the national air of Holland and the crowd 
again went wild. A gentleman from Reading mounted a 
chair and a hush came for a moment over the six hundred 
and odd tourists. 

“ Three cheers for Queen Wilhelmina and Holland! ” 
he shouted, and in unison with the swing of his handker¬ 
chief twelve hundred lungs sent vibrations jarring the 


140 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


rafters. Many a vocal chord was strained and hoarse when 
its owner turned in that evening, because of those cheers 
and of the cheers given immediately afterward for 
President Taft. 

The entertainment and the services of the band had 
been provided by the municipality and the decorations by 
the Hotel Nerderlanden. 

In the city the governor-general’s palace was shown, 
situated on the north side of the plain. The Waterloo- 



Courtesy of Thomas A. Peabody 

IN FRONT OF THE PAVILION, KEBON BINATANG 

plein was seen and a visit was paid to the Museum of the 
Batavian Society, containing an interesting display of 
ancient Javanese art work, weapons, implements, and 
ornaments. 

Not far from Weltervreden is Buitzenzorg, a town 
some six hundred to nine hundred feet above the sea, 
affording a sweeping view over expanses of tropic jungles, 
over volcanoes, river and intervale, barely less entrancing 
than the splendid view at Sensation Rock on the ride to 
the interior of Ceylon. The botanical gardens in 
Buitzenzorg rank at least equal with, and possibly ahead 
of the famous garden in Perideniya in Ceylon. They are 





AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST I4I 

said to have nearly ten thousand trees and plants. An 
artificial lake is fairly covered with beautiful lotos and the 
Victoria Regis, declared to surpass anything in the line, 
even in Japan. 

A king among children of Wanderlust has written that 
Java “ is the best of all the Malay Islands.” I can only 
believe that his judgment is correct and hope to live long 
enough to have enough of time, money, and health — for 
it will require not a little of each — to revisit the island. 
Our stay of two brief, broken days but whetted the appetite. 



CHAPTER XII. 


A STRAY NOOK IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA. 


ICTIMS of Wanderlust are now enjoying 
the fine passion of their obsession.” That 
is an entry which a genuine world-belter, 
one who has sailed around the Horn in 



good old days long gone by, in a square-rigger, and more 
than once, showed to me in his diary the morning of the day 
we were approaching Labuan. 

Now, where and what is Labuan? 

It is an island off the west coast of Borneo and has an 
area of some thirty miles. It is separated from the main 
island by a rocky but navigable channel, and is about half 
way between Manila to the northeast and Singapore to the 
southwest. In times of trouble it is a kind of hospitable 
half-way inn for ships sailing between Straits Settlements 
and the Philippines, and it is furthermore a kind of tavern 
for a part of the commerce of Cambodia and Java, when 
chandlery of a minor species is needed in a hurry, or when 
a hurricane makes a lot of botheration. 

The island is mountainous and has a rich soil, but 
somehow in the freakiness of development in this isolated 
quarter of the world it has not pressed forward with the 
activity which its location and its resources warrant. It 
possesses a fine harbor and a second harbor which is nothing 
extra, but is serviceable. Its water supply is good, and 
there are abundant mines of coal. The sultan of Borneo 
ceded the island to Great Britain in 1846, and early in the 
’nineties the island passed under the commercial control 
of the British North Borneo Company. The population 
is about ten or eleven thousand, mostly Malays and Chinese. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


143 


It is chronicled that in 1891 there were only twenty-one 
souls of English extraction on the island. 

From all of which it can be seen that Labuan has 
theoretic advantages which should bring it toward the 
front when the time is ripe. For the present it is marooned 
in the sea of commerce, and with Dyaks and head-hunters 
at its back and a wild country not far distant in the main 
island, it is a spot to appeal to the children of Wanderlust. 



One of the Wild Men of Borneo, as a caricaturist 
saw him 

Sailing from Java, the ship made her way along the 
tropical coast of Borneo. She was in the lower waters of 
the South China Sea, rarely traversed except by traders. 
Her course lay along islets vivid with riotous masses of 
greenery under waving fronds of graceful palms, 

“ Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea.” 

It had been supposed that the tourists would make the 
landing in the ship’s small boats, and for a day sailors had 
10 






144 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


been at work stowing the covers and releasing the gripes 
and laying out the oars and the coxswain’s chests, and doing 
other things which were mysterious to most of the pas¬ 
sengers. The ship carried fourteen pulling boats, and it 
was easy to see that the handling of some six hundred and 
fifty men, women, and children, unfamiliar, nearly every 
soul, with small boat work, would be a task not to be 
coveted. As we entered the harbor word came that the 
passengers would land in tenders. As we were coming to 
anchor the tenders put away from the shore. 



Courtesy of Colonel C. H. Case 

A CLOSED BAROUCHE IN BORNEO 

The island is named Labuan; the harbor is Victoria 
Harbor, and the town at its head is Victoria. 

Three large weather-beaten docks thrust themselves 
from the land well out into the water, and at one of these 
we made our landing. Loose planks and occasionally a 
missing one showed that something was amiss. At the 
landward termini low open sheds with corrugated roofs- 
were sprawling; they appeared to be well stocked. Behind 
them we struck the main commercial street of the town. 
For over half a mile this stretched away parallel to the 
water. At first the street is lined on the seaward side by 





AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


H5 


warehouses and then it leads along a slender grove of palms 
which fringe a narrow beach. In the other direction, 
beyond the docks, is a long coal shed, and behind it were 
many hundreds, probably thousands of tons of coal, a broad 
band of black, a tone color rarely seen in these low lati¬ 
tudes. Beyond the coal an inlet showed with native huts of 
bamboo poles and banana leaves and thatched with palmetto 
leaves and fibre. Still farther away was woodland, and 
beyond that the jungle. 

I enter into some detail, for I have never been able to 
discover more than three lines in print* describing the town. 
And I may say that what little there is in the encyclopedias 
about the island of Labuan dates back to 1904, at the 
latest; in another encyclopedia to 1893; and that little is 
conflictory. 

The street is grass-grown. It boasts what most of the 
English cities in this part of the world have — and to their 
credit — a narrow, deep, and neat gutter laid in concrete, 
a model of the kind and an improvement which would be 
acceptable in many an American town. 

Opposite the warehouses w^ere the principal shops of 
the town. Several of these did a semi-wholesale business 
in dried fish and groceries of a kind popular with sea¬ 
going captains. At first the shoppers from the ship 
sustained a chill of horror, for they believed that for them 
was not the joy of barter in that town, but hope returned 
when they found just beyond the grocery and chandlery 
houses a line of Chinese and Malay booths and shops, in 
which they expended shillings and guilders, and received 
souvenirs. They acquired tom-toms, spear-heads, sumpi- 
tans, creases, Chinese cuff buttons, silver bracelets, and, as 
always, post-cards. I watched one youth buy a pair of 
Chinese sandals; then, in some manner, I was moved to 
joke with the Chinese woman who had sold the pair, and 
revealed that I wished to buy her baby, which was riding 

• Not even a hotel leaflet came our way. In fact, we heard of no hotel in 
the town. 



146 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 



astride of the mother’s hip, after the fashion of all the 
world Labuan. The mother believed me to be in earnest 
and regarded me with horror. A moment later a burly 
Chinaman emerged from somewhere in the bowels of the 
shop and there was a bit of a conversation, ending with: 

“You talkee allee samee like clazy man.” 


WILD MEN OF BORNEO 

But this was not the only adventure which I had that 
morning in Labuan. A very discreet and Sociable parrot 
looked on me with favor, after I had presented him or her 
with a cracker, and I began bargaining for a conveyance 
of the bird to me, but Pretty Mamma intervened and 
forbade the purchase. 

“ It would teach Joe to swear,” said she. 

Near the post-office is a little green and there I 


ran 





AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


H 7 


across an Englishman who was inclined to accept friendly 
advances, a phenomenon among Englishmen in the Far 
East. From him I learned that the tenders on which our 
people had come ashore were offered by the Coalfields 
Company, Limited, and that a narrow-gauge railway which. 
I saw leads some six miles to the coal mines. I was told 
that in days gone by there had been many noble camphor 
trees on the island. Factories had been built on the island 
for preparing sago flour. Among the exports were birds’ - 
nests and pearls, but in small quantities. It was the 
Englishman’s belief that the place should advance, and the 
mystery was that the advance was so slow. 

Neither rickshaws nor victorias were to be chartered. 
The only vehicles which were obtainable were a species 
of buffalo or bullock cart, open, or with an oval-shaped 
thatched covering. The buffaloes were sedate and regarded 
us with mild, wide-eyed astonishment mingled with disfavor. 

Among members of the party who have the fever poison, 
of travel in their veins is a young gentleman from Yonkers- 
He is a natural victim of Wanderlust, and nothing pleases 
him more than to wander afield, seeing what he can see and 
admiring nature. In Labuan he struck off for an idle stroll 
into the back country. He wandered along shady roads,, 
past thatched huts, and out to a district where few, if 
indeed any, American feet have trodden. He reached a 
railroad crossing just as a train hove in sight. As the 
train, with Borneo indolence, drew by, the athletic youth 
swung aboard a coal car. He worked his way forward to 
a platform outside of a car which resembled one used for 
cattle, but which carried Malay women and children, who 
were, as he tells the tale, highly amused at having a white 
man “ in their midst ” and were still more amused at the 
manner of his advent. 

From the post-office, which was a Mecca for all hands, 
we traversed the remainder of the street to the fair-ground, 
where field-day sports were offered for our entertainment, 
as, to a smaller extent, athletic games were offered for our 
pleasure a month later in a Japanese city. 


148 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

First on the programme was a head-hunters’ dance, 
given by two Dyaks, who, as the card declared, had been 
“ especially escorted from the interior.” From a dressing- 
room under a building of the kind used in some of our 
American tracks as a judges’ stand, two brown brothers 
came out in silk breech clouts and gaudy yellow scarfs, each 
protected by a bark shield and an evil looking spear. An 
orchestra of natives sat cross-legged on the turf and banged 
tom-toms and crashed hollow cjunbals and played on instru¬ 
ments to .the author unknown. The two dancers circled 
and pranced and cavorted, one making bad, naughty faces 
and the other glaring back bold defiance. This they did 
for some minutes, while the spectators baked and baked in 
the sunlight. Next the two brown brothers drew their 
creases and stuck their spears in the turf. They called 
out once in a queer squeak and fell to shouting. In a 
minute or two the tumult and the shouting died, and the 
Dyaks faded away into the crowd. 

This was first cousin, once removed, to the next number 
on the programme, a dance by a brace of Malays who 
followed the curtain raiser with a war dance, at which 
timid ladies from the ship gazed with alarm. 

The next thriller in the al fresco vaudeville was a 
Chinese devil dance, in which a Celestial cousin came into 
the tourney bearing a hollow dragon’s head made of paper 
and about the size of half a barrel. Cloth of a brilliant 
vermilion which massacred the eye reached from the 
dragon head to another Chinaman and hung toward the 
ground to simulate the belly of a beast whose head 
was the paper contraption and whose tail was the second 
Chinaman. Both of the men crouched and the dragon was 
supposed to be in position, belly to the ground. The head 
was rigged with a hinge for the lips and with platter lips 
painted scarlet along the gums and lined with wicked¬ 
looking teeth. The first Celestial cleverly juggled a sprig 
into the gaping mouth and a tongue of Canton flannel 
lapped around the morsel. Then the trouble began to 
brew, for the weed disagreed with the sacred stomach. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


149 


The dragon’s eyes rolled in their sockets and ere long the 
beast was rolling on the ground. Then the sprig was 
ejected from the lips and came to light in masticated sections. 

Buffalo races were on the card. Native boys mounted 
three clumsy beasts and urged them down a course about 
a hundred yards long, the animals from time to time 
colliding and interfering. It was a comical sight and the 
spectators were well pleased. 



Copyrighted iqio, Underwood & Underwood , N. Y. 

WAR DANCE 


A sport at which the visitors marveled was the native 
game of football. A dream of two elevens with a gridiron 
and signals and line bucking came to some of the on-lookers 
as the announcement of football was made, but the players 
proved to be bare-footed Alalays and the ball an open-work 
wicker affair suitable for a lady’s workbasket. The game 
was a desultory and helter-skelter proceeding, about as much 
like the real thing as a five o’clock tea is. 

But the sumpitan contest was more convincing. 
Hollow reeds, about seven or eight feet in length, having 




150 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


trowel-shaped spear-heads lashed to the sides of the muzzles, 
were handed to the contestants, each of whom had pro¬ 
vided himself with slim darts. A dart has a cork, against 
which the marksman blows, after aiming at the target. 
In the exhibition the targets were circles of brown paper 
about as large as a silver dollar. They were stuck on 
envelopes at a measured distance of forty-six feet. Eight 
natives competed and each had seven darts to use, no 
sighting shot. Out of the fifty-six darts nearly half landed 
in the envelopes and three in the target. 

The field sports over, the picnickers from the ship were 
bidden to a cluster of trees which marked the boundary of 
the beach, and stewards from the ship were busy for an 
hour breaking out lunch boxes from large dunnage bags 
and serving them out to the hungry. Apollinaris was 
served, to wash down the sandwiches and the hard-boiled 
eggs. Imagine these and cold bread veal cutlets eaten 
in the shade of palms and conceive of buxom Malay lasses 
looking at you and your pickles in open-eyed wonder, and 
you have a faint idea of that lunch. 

Lunch over, the party trooped back to the dock. On 
the way I saw the pig-tailed Chinaman who had perspired 
copiously in enacting the part of the dragon’s head. He 
was enjoying a bowl of tea, and he grinned in a sociable 
way. At the dock I saw several scores of barrels of a 
fibrous material which resembled pulp plaster, but did not 
have the time to investigate and to find what it was. 

As the ship weighed anchor a steamer flying the black, 
white, and red of the German Empire passed inside the 
harbor mouth. 

For some reason I have distinct memories of little 
Labuan. I have a feeling that the place may some year 
loom large in the theatre of the Far East. Whether or not 
the port comes into the lime light, it is a spot which 
appeals to true children of Wanderlust, a remote corner 
which is barely known even to sailors in the East Indian 
Archipelago, yet which may well come into its own in a 
decade or two. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


51 


BOSTON TEA PARTY. 

From Borneo to Boston is a long cry. The interval 
was jumped by Cleveland Chapter, No. 1, Daughters of 
the American Revolution, a few hours after we left the 
dent in the Bornean coast in which we had spent the 
afternoon. 

I may remark about the chapter that, like Aphrodite, 
it was born at sea, that it had thirty-four members, and 
that it represented twenty-four states. A lady from 
Brookline, Massachusetts, was godmother, and one from 
Detroit was the regent. 

The chapter observed the anniversary of the Boston 
Tea Party by a celebration in the forward dining-room. 
“ Old Glory ” and the German colors were intertwined 
back of the regent’s chair. Electric fans circled and every 
porthole was gaping wide to catch the headway breeze. 
Ladies were in full evening dress and the men were in 
spiketails or dinner coats, in spite of the intense heat of 
the evening. 

Mrs. Teunis Hamlin of Washington told about the 
national organization and the hall which it is building. 
A former regent of Old South Chapter in Boston read a 
paper on “ The Day We Celebrate.” A passenger from 
Norfolk gave a short sketch of the East India Company. 
The wonderful lady lecturer talked about the tea party, 
declaring that King George preferred his tea hot and with 
fresh water and that the Boston patriots preferred theirs 
cold and with salt water. 

Doctor Clark handled the topic “ Ancestry ” and the 
ship’s orchestra played “ The Watch on the Rhine.” A 
letter was read which had been written in Calcutta by 
Mrs. Charles W. Fairbanks, wife of the former vice- 
president, in which a greeting was sent to the chapter. 
Passengers who were members of other patriotic societies 
extended congratulations. 

Hands were reached back to Boston across two oceans 
and a century and a third of time. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


MANILA. 

A T the same early hour on the same week day 
that one George Dewey steamed by Corregidor, 
our ship, nearly three times the size of the 
Olympia, sailed by the same island. When 
abreast of Cavite, she was met by whistling launches, 
and the remainder of her progress to Manila was an 
ovation marked by salutes from everything afloat from 
Cavite to the pier. Our reception in Batavia had been 
kindly; our reception in Manila was tempestuous. Guide¬ 
books had been sent on to meet us in Labuan and were 
distributed the day after we sailed from that port, a cour¬ 
tesy which was a forerunner of many another which was 
extended during the memorable days that we were in the 
Filipino capital. 

When the pilot boarded the Cleveland, somewhere near 
Corregidor, he brought with him a package of envelopes, 
each marked with the name of a state and destined to be 
handed to a passenger from that state who would dis¬ 
tribute the contents, which were found to be ribbon badges, 
printed with place and date and the name of the state. And 
thereby hangs a tale. 

For a fortnight Manila papers had been filled with the 
ship’s progress. The passenger list had been printed and 
a municipal committee had rearranged the names, by states 
and alphabetically, for the purpose of greeting the visitors 
according to their residences. We were to be welcomed by 
“ state-mates,” if I may be permitted to coin such a word. 
The committee had ordered the badges, which were dis¬ 
tributed, as I have written, in the course of the run from 
Corregidor to Manila. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


153 


Whistling steamers and launches and playing bands, 
afloat and ashore, gave glad greeting to the voyagers, as 
the ship was tying up at a government pier. All along 
the string-piece military uniforms glittered, handkerchiefs 
flaunted, and hands waved. Cheerful young fellows stood 
on cleats, bitts, and timber heads, and Filipinos sat on the 
tops of dolphins of spiles. It was the glad hand which was 
extended and it was extended to the wrist. And then we 
trooped down the gang-plank, welcomed at its dock end 
by members of the committee who gave to each tourist a 
lettered silk badge which entitled the recipient to free 
riding at any and all times for three days on the Manila 
tramways. 

Identified by a state ribbon, each tourist was directed 
to a part of the pier reserved for world-belters from his 
or her state, indicated by a huge placard, there to receive 
salutation from a Manila “ state-mate.” 

And then it was entertainment in variety. Some of the 
visitors were taken to the Masonic Temple, some to the 
Elks’ lodge room, some were royally cared for by Knights 
Templars, some were conveyed to one church or another 
to attend worship, some to a succession of churches as 
objects of history and architecture, some to the trolley for 
a general ride, some to special “ state ” trolley cars, some 
to automobiles, some to the University Club, some to 
the Luneta, and some to carriages for a general tour of the 
city. It was diversity, and yet one factor was common, as 
Pauline said, who struggles with algebra and quadratics. 
That factor? No guest was allowed to spend money 
that morning. 

It was our good fortune to have a ride with a tanned 
young gentleman from the Nutmeg State and first we were 
conveyed to the old walled city, Intramuros. Founded in 
1571, half a century after the discovery of the island by 
the far-famed navigator Magellan, Manila has its ancient 
lore, stories of the sleepy Spanish rule. It is chronicled that 
the first effort of the men from the Western world of that 


154 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


time was given to building a fort to protect the settlement 
from savages from Mindanao, who made forays on the more 
peaceful natives of Luzon. It was Fort Santiago which 
the settlers built, and parts of it remain, relics of a troubled 
day long gone by. 

In place of native palisades the Spanish built thick walls. 
They built the church of San Augustine, starting it toward 
the end of the sixteenth century, a building still standing, 
under whose altar lie the remains of Legaspi and Salcedo, 
one a brave warrior and explorer and the other a missionary. 
It was not long after the adventurous band of Spaniards 
located near the Pasig that the walls were built. Many a 
strange story might the giant bastions and parapets tell, 
could they speak! Chinese pirates had plundered the early 
town, but the later walls bade defiance to the yellow devils 
outside with the black flag or the yellow dragon. Inside 
the city, Chinese residents early rose in murderous revolt, 
but they were quelled with severity. Later on, but ere the 
walls saw their first century, British cannon thundered 
against the stout gates, and the men behind them forced 
their way and sacked the city. 

But the gateway through which we drove was framed 
now in peace. Yet, there was something strange in its 
atmosphere. Gray and stained and massive, it carried its 
air of mystery and romance, and the fancy went ranging 
back to the days when the waters of this part of the world 
were scarcely charted. Passing through the time-honored 
gate we reached the Roman Catholic cathedral, a stately 
and beautiful building, one of the most imposing in that 
quarter of the globe. We visited other Catholic 
churches also. 

Next we went to the government building, in which 
the Philippine assembly convenes, and viewed a large paint¬ 
ing, the work of a native, representing an allegorical 
Columbia and a daughter of the island. 

We rode along the Escolta and streets in the heart of 
the city, clean streets, some of them paved with Belgian 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 155 

blocks, the first blocks of the kind which I had seen, if I 

remember aright, since leaving Naples. 

Boarding a trolley car and displaying the ribbon pass, 
at which the conductor gave a gracious grin, we traversed 
a section in which streets are named after states in the 
north and the west of the homeland. The conductor 

pointed out at one time a Presbyterian church, an 
inviting little building on Dakota Street. In time 

we came to the Cathedral of St. John and St. Mary, 
that of Bishop Brent, who had been at the head of the 
Protestant Episcopal church in the Philippines for seven 



ROMAN CATHOLIC CATHEDRAL IN MANILA 

years. The bishop was absent on a trip in the north part 
of the group and Dean Murray Bartlett conducted the 
service, which opened with a processional hymn by a vested 
choir, the girls in white caps and gowns. In the prayer 
which mentions the president of the United States, the 
governor-general of the Philippine Islands was included. 
The thanksgiving for a safe return from sea was also read. 
The sermon was from the text: “There was a man sent 
from God, whose name was John.” Perhaps because a 
large part of the congregation is made up of military officers 
and enlisted men who attend in uniform, the sermon laid 
emphasis on the duty and the value of a soldier. It gave 





156 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


as an illustration the triumph of John Sobieski over an 
army of Turks beneath the walls of Vienna, which was 
commemorated by the archbishop of that city in a sermon 
preached from the same text. I was minded to think also 
of “ Jack ” Phillip and the battle with Cervera. 

Later on, we were told that Bishop Brent’s diocese 
had twelve Episcopal clergymen, five lay readers, and two 
candidates for holy orders, and that in 1908 the number 
of baptisms was three hundred and thirty-two. 

I was told, too, that the Presbyterian church in Manila 
had two hundred members and a Sunday School of one 
hundred children. The Presbyterian church in the islands 
had over twelve thousand members and the Methodists 
over thirty thousand adherents. The Baptists had several 
churches for whites and forty-five churches and missions for 
natives, it was said, with a membership of three thousand. 
The United Brethren were credited with twelve churches 
and a membership of two thousand. There were also 
Congregational churches, and the Disciples of Christ and 
the Peniel mission were at work. 

I made inquiry about the Aglipay movement, but gained 
little real information beyond the statement that it was 
existing, that the claim had been made for it that it was 
advancing. The directory gave a list of names and churches. 

The tourists had luncheon in different hotels, our own 
section being assigned to the Hotel Continental. In the 
early afternoon I took a short walk to the famous bridge 
,'of Spain, built nearly three hundred years ago by old de 
Tabora, a bridge which has weathered floods, typhoons, and 
earthquakes. The office of the Manila Times is not far 
away, in fact, overlooks the bridge and the Pasig. 

An hour later I was on the famed and beautiful 
Malecon drive, protected by triple ranks of martialed 
palms. The Luneta was another object of admiration, the 
noted Luneta of Manila, the driveway of oval shape by the 
shore enclosing two bandstands, which are surrounded by 
a splendid green lawn. In the meantime some of the 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


57 


tourists repaired to the University Club and others to the 
baseball diamond. There were whispers that a secret few 
found the way to a cock fight, but these rumors I did 
not verify. 

On the day after our arrival the Manila Times printed 
a cablegram from Hong Kong, in which it was stated that 
apprehensions existed in Canton as to the visit which our 
party was to make in that teeming and turbulent urban 
hive. There had recently been disorder in Canton, and a 
number of executions for disturbances in the heart of the 
city. The reputation which the American around-the- 
world party had in several quarters of Canton was a 
peculiar one, as we subsequently learned. It had spread 
among numbers of the unruly in the city that most of the 
men on the ship wore money-belts and carried quantities of 
gold and silver, and that most of the women had rings and 
like jewelry of great value. The on-coming of the rich 
Americans was awaited by thieves in the crowded and 
troubled Chinese city with eager anticipation. 

A part of this was printed in the cablegram and a part 
developed in a few days. In the meantime Consul 
Bergholtz had forwarded a letter of instructions which was 
posted on the main bulletin board of the ship. The letter 
suggested that when the strangers entered the city they 
should avoid patting the heads or noticing in like manner 
any of the Chinese children. For a time we were mystified 
by the suggestion, but soon a traveler explained that he had 
heard that some of the more superstitious Chinese had a 
belief that white foreigners had the power of bewitching 
children if they touched their heads. Another suggestion 
in the consul’s letter intimated that coins should not be 
tossed to natives on the street; the reason for this was not 
hard to find, for a scramble for the money could easily 
screen a rush or an assault. A third suggestion directed 
the passengers to continue their ride or walk in the city 
unconcernedly, in case any occurrence of a disturbing or 
suspicious nature was observed. These directions occa- 


158 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

sioned considerable comment at the time that they were 
posted on the bulletin board. Subsequently they were 
remembered, and with cause. 

In the meantime the tourists were being feted in Manila. 
One afternoon Governor-General Forbes gave a reception 
to the entire expedition in the palace in Malacanan, a 
spacious and beautiful building overlooking the Pasig. The 
governor-general was assisted by Mrs. Conrad Hatheway, 
the wife of his secretary, and by Martin Egan, editor of 
the Manila Times and chairman of the general reception 
committee. The guests had free access to the greater part 
of the palace, in the same manner that they had opportunity 
to inspect one of the mikado’s palaces in Kioto less than 
a month later. A high balcony afforded a fine view of 
country beyond the river, including a hamlet in which a 
skirmish between some of Uncle Sam’s soldiers and a com¬ 
pany of the little brown brothers had taken place in the 
first days of the occupation. Beyond the hamlet was 
country which had been debatable ground for several 
months after Aguinaldo had attacked the defenses and before 
Wheaton attacked and occupied Pasig. In several of the 
apartments were excellent oil paintings of men who had 
been prominent in the history of Manila or Luzon. 

Evening began to close in while the reception was in 
progress, and in the dusk scores of tiny incandescent electric 
lamps appeared in the luxuriant tropical garden of the 
palace. As the shadows gathered more lights glittered till 
the thick boscage was agleam with jets of red, white, and 
blue. Music was played by the Philippine Constabulary 
band, which had returned a short time before from a trip 
to the mainland. The band is among the finest in the 
world, and the playing on the afternoon of the reception 
was admired by men and women who heard some of the 
most famous bands in the leading European capitals. The 
fifty little brown musicians rendered difficult selections with 
marvelous accuracy and gingersome dash and artistic enjoy¬ 
ment of the work. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


159 


Among the Filipinos who were guests was the famous 
general, Villamor, sometime a fighter under Aguinaldo and 
now a supporter of the American government. He was a 
short man with a squat figure and the jaw and the nose 
of a tenacious fighter; but his conversation was of the five 
o’clock tea variety. Other guests were Major-Generals 
Duval and Carter of the United States Army. It was a 
gay and brilliant throng which passed the early evening in 
the palace. In it were ecclesiastics of high standing in the 
Roman Catholic church and clergymen of different 
Protestant denominations and civil officials of rank and 
importance. A luncheon was served by Chinese waiters, 
one of extra attractiveness. 

When the reception was concluded segments of the 
party from the ship were taken in hand by Manila Knights 
Templars and by local Elks, and were again feted. A ball 
was given by the Knights, and it was midnight ere some of 
the young people were back in their berths on the ship. 

One of the most pleasant of the memories of, the stay 
in the Filipino capital centers around a trolley ride in the 
early morning air to Fort McKinley and a review of the 
soldiers at the post. The fort is situated on high land, a 
short distance from the city, and the air is sensibly fresher 
and more stimulating than that at the mouth of the Pasig. 
The spectators collected on the broad verandas and the 
lawn of the headquarters and the sidewalk near by while 
the Seventh and the Twelfth Regiments of Infantry, three 
batteries of the Fifth Artillery, and the Twelfth Cavalry 
marched past. It was a simple spectacle, merely a passage 
in review, General Potts and his staff, mounted, surveying 
the boys as they swung by in column of squads. The 
soldiers were in a kind of khaki, and were husky, tanned 
young chaps, fully nineteen-twentieths of them clean 
shaven. An old Grand Army man from Pennsylvania, who 
had fought under Sherman, complimented them with the 
word “ fit.” The lads appeared to my eyes to be equal in 
soldierly quality to even the Gordon Highlanders whom, 
11 


6 o 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


in tartan and kilt, we had seen in Calcutta. They fully 
held their own with the neat and soldierly British infantry 
that we saw a few days later on the peak at Hong Kong. 

After the passage in review the spectators from the ship 
were taken to the special trolley cars in carriages, automo¬ 
biles, and quartermasters’ wagons. 

Another of the memories of those days in Manila is 
that of a trip in a small river steamer for several miles up 
the Pasig, along by low banks and former skirmish grounds. 
In days not so very far away the author had acted as cox¬ 
swain of a steam whaleboat, and he reveled for a spell 
when he held the wheel in his hand again and Little Joe 
was permitted to man the whistle cord. 

I like to hark back to the walls of the old town, 
Intramuros. The great gray masses are now obsolete, but 
once they were the last word of military science in the 
Spanish colony. Their construction cost lives and blood, 
as well as treasure,— doubloons and moidores, and pieces- 
of-eight in the old romantic times three centuries gone by. 
The waters which once flooded their moat hid many a 
crime. In the dense chambers which once were in use 
many a horror occurred of which there is now scant record. 
In some, have been found bolts and strange looking instru¬ 
ments which were only too often used in the days of old- 
time Spanish misrule. 

In the opening days of the American occupation the 
walls played their part, and when the insurrection broke 
out the Americans gave sanctuary to unarmed Filipinos who 
came inside the old town. But the walls are broken-down 
dogs of war for all of that. Decrepit, encrusted with moss 
and lichen, they are an anachronism, standing as an object 
lesson in history. Useless though they are, it would be a 
shame to raze landmarks so romantic. 

It is stimulating to turn from the spell of the past to 
the wonderful story of the throbbing present. A Yale 
graduate who is employed in the Philippine Bureau of 
Forestry informed the author that the pacifying of the 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


6 


island is complete, that an American can live anywhere in 
the civilized section in entire safety. The somnolent 
Spaniard, inert, cruel, and corrupt, has given way to the 
energetic American, master of machinery. The American 
settlers are distinguished by intelligence and liberality, and 
by a love for electricity. When Dewey entered, the only 
tram was a horse railroad barely half a mile long. The 
streets had been for centuries filthy; there had been no 
sanitary arrangements worthy of the name. But since the 
sons of Uncle Sam had waved their magic wand over the 
city, Manila has changed from one of the most unclean 
towns in the Far East to one of the most sanitary. Costly 
water and sewer systems have been installed. The streets 
are clean. Parks and boulevards have been laid out. The 
spavin tram has given way to an up-to-the-minute trolley 
which traverses all parts of the city and most of the suburbs. 
Splendid police and fire departments have been organized. 
The harbor has been dredged; steel docks have been built. 
A fine public library is patronized by hundreds each day. 
There is a fully equipped public market. Freedom of 
worship is taken as a matter of course. Newspapers are 
printed in English and Spanish. American capital is exten¬ 
sively engaged in the city, and, for that matter, in many 
parts of Luzon and some parts of other Philippine Islands. 

The information given by the forestry employee was 
verified in chats which I had with numerous officials, several 
business men, and some intelligent young Filipinos. I was 
further told that, were a small part of the expense of the 
army to be deducted or charged off, the colony was prac¬ 
tically self-supporting. 

I was told that the city’s progress since the Sunday 
morning that Montojo fought Dewey had been too rapid 
to be measured. I was assured that labor was better paid, 
and that all classes were better clothed and fed. 

When our ship left the city it seem as if half of white 
Manila and his wife were at the pier to speed the parting 


162 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

guest. From the landward end of the string-piece to the 
water boundary, men, women, and children were waving 
hands, handkerchiefs, and American flags. In the midst 
of the throng the Constabulary band was playing patriotic 
airs. The tourists and a fair fraction of the crew were 
along the landward rails or in the shrouds. When the 
order came to cast off, the band blared out with “ Home, 
Sweet Home,” and then pandemonium broke loose on the 
rails and along the pier. Cheer after cheer rose in wild 
waves from the planks below and swept up the ship to the 
masthead. It actually seemed as if shreds of mucous mem¬ 
brane were rasping out from the throat of more than one 
half-frantic, exiled home-lover on the sun-seamed planks 
of the pier. A tempest of yells and cheers burst from the 
throng and flooded the decks. Waves of tossing handker¬ 
chiefs danced and broke. An answering tempest swept 
down from the voyagers along the rails and on the ratlines. 

“ Three cheers for Manila,” boomed a leather-lunged 
megaphone of human flesh and blood from the promenade 
deck rail, and the hoarse salute went out toward the old 
walled city. They were responded to by the crowd on the 
pier with a wild flutter of umbrellas and handkerchiefs. 

By this time the ship was backing out into the stream. 
In a few moments the Filipino band was discovered to be 
descending into a tender and when the ship’s bow began to 
swing, with that majestic slowness which marks an ocean 
steamship, the tender came by the port side, crashing out 
“ Columbia’s the Gem of the Ocean.” Over on the reced¬ 
ing pier a Filipino boy had climbed a timber-head, and was 
methodically waving an American flag. The last glimpse 
which we caught of the city showed the small Filipino boy 
and the great flag in the foreground. Was it prophetic? 

In the meantime the tender with the Constabulary band 
was accompanying the ship down Manila Bay. In nearly 
every minute of the escort time the band crashed and 
banged out patriotic music. Yes, and when the little brown 
musicians turned, not a mile distant from Cavite, it was 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 163 

“ The Star Spangled Banner ” which came pealing over the 
water to the ship. 

Then the voyagers turned their eyes on bold Corregidor, 
and wondered at the sight which the dark rocks discovered 
on the fateful first of May, when the Olympia slid by in 
the darkness and stood down toward Cavite. The island 
is rugged and high, almost an ideal place for a fortification, 
and we easily believed it, when we were told that a disap¬ 
pearing gun near the summit has a range nearly to Cavite. 



CHAPTER XIV. 


CHRISTMAS IN CHINA. 


F ROM the excitement of Manila’s valedictory, we of 
the ship turned with a rather uncertain feeling to 
the possible adventures awaiting us in Canton, teem¬ 
ing, turgescent, insubordinate Canton, where over 
a hundred thousand souls spend half of their lives in sampans, 
where river pirates flourish, where the executioner beheads 
for two dollars, where narrow lanes invite riot and breed 
ambush, where a million Celestials still look on whites as 
foreign devils, and where there are yet recesses unknown to 
the tread of American feet; Canton, city of turbulence and 
mystery, the least known to the Western world of the great 
ports of Asia. 

As we were coming to Hong Kong, news arrived that 
the viceroy of southern China had issued a proclamation 
promising death for any of the Cantonese who should be 
implicated in violence toward any of the American party. 
This we learned subsequently to be correct, - and we were 
assured that the proclamation was to be found in Chinese 
characters on every dead wall in the city. 

In the meantime we were at a mooring buoy in the 
harbor at Hong Kong, and the six hundred and fifty men, 
women, and children had been told off into five sections, 
each to visit the up-river city on a different day. 

It was on Christmas Day that our section made the 
trip, a day which began early for the writer, for be it said 
that he returned from a trip to Hong Kong a few minutes 
before midnight, arriving at the gangway on the last tender 
from the shore. Pinned on the curtain of the stateroom 
was the stocking of Little Joe, filled with nothing but cold 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 165 

air. The two other members of the family lay in their 
curtained berths, snoring the snore of the just. A picture 
of a wistful and disappointed little face came into Father’s 
mind, were that stocking to remain unfilled. And so it 
was that Popper descended on a marveling steward far aft 
in the after galley. At first the steward was unenthusiastic, 
but when the magic name of Joe was mentioned, ah! then 
it was different. It was noddings, no trouble, sir, at all, 
and the Ganymede explored among his cups and pots and 
pans. I contrived to acquire two oranges and a cold- 
storage apple. Then I confiscated two chrysanthemums 
from a vase in the after dining-room and induced a belated 
angel, whose husband was elsewhere, to contribute some 
cough drops. Returning to the cabin I drew out from a 
suit-case a Siamese flag with a fine big elephant in the 
center, which had been reserved among the little fellow’s 
presents for the next day. Then I sat down on a steamer 
trunk and stuffed the gaunt stocking with the fruit and the 
other slender gifts. In such manner was the stocking filled, 
while Joe lay fast in Dreamland. 

But, now to get back to where I was before getting 
astray in the intermezzo. Christmas Day began early for 
some two hundred and twenty-five of the world-travelers 
of the ship. At 4:15 the patient Guenther switched on 
the stateroom light, and Popper awoke and dressed for the 
trip up the Pearl River to Canton. The little lad still lay 
sound asleep in his pajamas, dreaming of the ride of Santy 
in an airship from Pearyville down the funnel of the ship. 
It had been decided in family council that Popper and 
Big Sister should be the only members of the family to 
take the trip, so that, in case of danger, two of the family 
should not be exposed. Father had strenuously combatted 
the wish of Pauline to see the city, but Pauline is at that 
age when Father must obey, not order. 

Biscuits and coffee were served in the forward dining¬ 
room, and a few minutes before five o’clock the section 
trooped over the forward port gang-plank to the Kinshan, 


l66 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

a river steamer bound for the city of mystery, seventy-eight 
miles up the Pearl River. The lights along the water¬ 
front of Hong Kong were beginning to pale, and the thin 
night mists were curling away from the harbor. Two 
bells struck from an American man-o’-war, as we stood 
away against the tide. 

Talk on the sail was mostly about the experience of the 
section which had seen Canton on the day preceding. That 
section returned at midnight, and little opportunity had 
been afforded to hear of its adventures, yet one of our own 
segment had conversed in the smoking-room with two of 
the men who had traversed the city. He heard that the 
members of the earlier section had been taken to the execu¬ 
tion ground, and had there seen the body of a Chinese 
woman who had poisoned her husband with laudanum in 
the family rice. The woman had obtained short shrift in 
the Chinese trial and the day after the accusation she was 
strangled by the executioner. Men in the earlier section 
saw the body, with the double cord passed around the neck, 
and told about the bulging eyes and the hang of the heavy¬ 
haired head, as it lolled on one side of the neck. But the 
woman was not the only criminal executed on the grounds. 
Six Chinamen who had been guilty of river piracy had been 
beheaded, and the section had seen the severed corpses lying 
near the feet of the woman. A Chinese law requires the 
bodies of executed criminals to remain in the public eye 
for a day. 

It came out, too, in the sail up the Pearl, that a 
British gunboat had proceeded to Canton and had sent 
ashore a landing party with a field-piece to be on hand in 
case of trouble. It was told that the viceroy had sent word 
to the captain of each police precinct that disorder in his 
precinct spelled reduction for the captain; and, in case the 
disorder meant bloodshed, it spelled the captain’s dismissal. 

With stories such as these going the rounds of the 
Kinshan, we neared the landing place. Every eye was 
strained toward the dingy planks. Along the string-piece 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 1 67 

we discerned a double rank of Chinese soldiers and, back 
of them, white faces and employees of the steamer company. 

It was a circumspect section which soberly passed up 
the gangplank and onto the landing. The suggestions of 
the consul and the tales told had a quieting influence on the 
men, and the women were, a few of them, at any rate, 
willing to allow the men to make the conversation. 


AN EXILE FROM HARTFORD 

As the van of the visitors struck out from the landing, 
a detail of Chinese soldiers swung forward of the foremost 
and preceded it toward the Victoria Hotel. On either side 
walked lusty Chinese policemen with locusts in hand. It 
was through a living lane that the section fared. The 
onlookers were two and three deep, in some places five deep. 
Most of the natives had the stolid Celestial air which 
masks a capacity which few from the Western world recog¬ 
nize till experience brings knowledge. It was a stolid 









168 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

throng, apparently not interested, not alert. An occasional 
black look or a scowl was caught, but, as a whole, the men 
along the way were orderly. Here and there were men 
with a quietly expectant air, men who seemed curious to 
learn whether something would break loose and to be 
willing to be on hand to see what they would see. It was 
a throng which impressed me as if stolid and yet under 
restraint, self-restraint, perhaps. Stolid and expectant are, 
perhaps, the best words to use to describe it. 

A surprise was awaiting me as we left the landing. On 
the edge of the living lane was a young white, who was 
inquiring for the author. In a few moments he located 
me, and then introduced himself as Arthur Bowman of the 
Imperial custom house, sometime of Hartford, our home 
city. He recited an interesting story about his departure 
from Hartford in 1899, and his service for three years in 
the Fourth Cavalry, a part of the time in the Philippines 
in the dark days of the insurrection. Mr. Bowman said 
that on account of the precautions taken, the tourists would 
undoubtedly find the city to be safe. The proclamations 
which had been posted in Chinese declaring that violence 
would bring summary reprisal had made a strong impression. 

Almost in silence we made our way through an open 
part of the city near the river, escorted by police on either 
flank, and followed by another detail of soldiers. In a small 
square by the side of the hotel we found a force of twenty- 
nine guides in waiting. We were apportioned out among 
these, and each guide led his convoy to a small squadron of 
sedan chairs. 

For each sedan chair the motive power consisted of 
the muscles of three coolies, two for the forward shafts 
and one for the after. The men were barefooted, and 
carried the chair partly by a grasp on the shafts and partly 
by straps slung over their shoulders. 

We crossed, on a queer open bridge, a curious kind of a 
small canal, and plunged into the native city. The first 
street which we entered was about nine or ten feet in width. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


69 


It was paved with large, solid stones and, contrary to what 
we had been expecting, was clean and not malodorous. As 
I afterward learned, the viceroy had caused a part of the 
city to be cleansed before our oncoming. Booths and stores 
were on each side of our chairs. Overhanging signs swung 
three feet above our heads. They were gorgeous boards in 
black and gilt, or in yellow and scarlet, over which sprawling 
Chinese characters reeled, curious nuclei from which lines 
strayed in a manner mysterious to the Western mind. 
Except for the dim light, the effect would have been 
dazzling; as it was, the picture was fantastic. 

I have written that the light was dim. Buildings rose 
high on either hand, narrowing the sky to a slender blue 
slit, a pale ribbon above the walls and signs. 

At once the street contracted from a lane to a path. 
The half light deepened into a dusk, then into a deeper 
gloom. The interior lay in dark shadow. All along the 
path stolid-eyed onlookers w T ere lined, in places two deep, 
men and women with strange slanting eyes and grotesque 
children, who turned a curious gaze on the invaders. Of 
the men, some of the more intelligent regarded us with a 
look which was bland, yet passive, always expectant, 
never tense. 

Along one path was a succession of butchers’ stalls, in 
which bare-armed boys were mincing an unfamiliar flesh 
with small cleavers. Skinned rats were hanging in a number 
of the stalls, and jerked or dried rats were to be seen on 
all of the counters. Cat-flesh was exposed for sale in some 
of these markets. We were told that dog-flesh could be 
found in a few. 

In another quarter were dozens of fish stalls, in which 
the dried fish exceeded the fresh. We saw dealers replenish¬ 
ing their stock of fresh from baskets carried over the 
shoulders of arrivals from the river who transported supplies 
in huge wickers suspended at the ends of bamboo poles 
balanced as easily as if the weight were but a pound. 

One lane led to the notorious execution ground, a 


70 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


squalid and grewsome opening half filled with scattered 
crockery. The bodies which the earlier tourists had seen 
had been taken away, but I saw on the ground dark stains, 
which we heard were from the veins of the pirates slain 
the day before. The blood had begun to decompose. The 
framework used for the strangling of the woman was in 
place, an ugly reminder of a cruel and barbaric death. 

The headsman lived near by, and in answer to a request, 
strengthened by a half dollar, he lounged into the fore¬ 
ground to be photographed. With a stolid indifference he 
struck a shambling attitude, his great knife uplifted in 
his unwashed hand. His unintelligent and brutally indif¬ 
ferent face was unshaven. It was unsavory with a dirty 
stubble of gray. At the moment the view was taken a 
sinister grin parted his thin lips, and gave to the face an 
aspect even more hideous and revolting. 

From that sight the visitors returned to their sedan 
chairs, ready to forget the sight and ready to turn to new 
scenes. They passed in silence along a lane darker and 
more uninviting than any traversed previously. Suddenly 
a yell sounded from beyond an elbow in the path, a scream 
which told of pain and anger. My coolies gave subdued 
grunts, and I caught on the face of a Chinaman in a booth 
that look of expectancy which I had grown to await and 
to understand. I could feel a slight heave to the chair, 
caused by the unconscious tightening of the grasp of the 
coolies on the shaft, a telepathic signal of danger. What 
was the next moment to reveal? 

Pauline was leaning forward in her chair, immediately 
in front of mine. For a second her face was directed to 
the turn in the lane. Then she slowly swung it around to 
'the side, and gazed unconcernedly into the depths of a booth 
on the opposite side, where some silks were for sale. 

In those few moments there was a headlong scurry of 
Chinamen toward the corner. A figure in uniform made a 
flying dive in front of the shafts of the girl’s chair. The 
chair had by this time turned the elbow and mine was at 
the turn in the next second. 



Copyrighted iqio by Underwood &f Underwood , N. Y. 

“A SINISTER GRIN PARTED HIS THIN LIPS” 

savage gash in his shaven crown. Blood was gushing, too, 
from a broken nose, smashed flat over his face. The 
wounded fighter was putting a strain on the cue of his 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 171 


1 wo Chinamen were in the thick of a street brawl. 
Blood was pouring down the forehead of one from a 







172 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


assailant with one hand and was groping under his blouse 
with his murderous other hand. While he was still reach¬ 
ing for the knife, the policeman who had sprung across the 
path ahead of Pauline’s chair made his headlong tackle and 
plunged his body between the two men. A moment more 
and another policeman was at his hand, and the potential 
trouble which lurked in the brawl was over. 

All of this time Pauline and her black picture hat 
were traveling farther into the dark lane. Not a scream 
rose from the young girl as the Chinese yells punctured the 
gloom and the assaulted thief spat and coughed blood. 
True to Consul Bergholtz’s instructions, she had paid no 
attention to the occurrence. 

Farther down the path we saw a teeming spot, where 
the population seemed to live five or six to a room. A tree 
trunk rose two feet distant from the lane and high over the 
pavement the roof of the dwelling was built flush to the 
trunk, where it forked, and flush to the limbs. 

Pagodas and temples galore we saw in the ride of that 
afternoon. The Flowery Pagoda rose nearly two hundred 
feet in the air for our admiration, and the pagoda of the 
Queen of Heaven was less poetical than its name. The 
temple of the five hundred genii should have interested us 
more than it did. But the Five-Story Pagoda did interest 
us, and still more, a few months later on, when some of us 
heard that the trouble between Cantonese police and 
Manchu soldiers started at a point near the pagoda. There 
was wild work for a time, when that disturbance thrilled 
Canton, and blood was shed on each side. 

We were carried in our chairs to booths where jade and 
jewelry were for sale, and to others where queer handiwork 
in feathered jewelry and silver were on the counters. Still 
other shops displayed bizarre things in sandalwood. In one 
spot I beheld a tiny silk-weaving factory, with toy looms 
over a dirt floor, the weaver’s feet on the dingy and 
squalid board, and the really beautiful fabric but a foot 
above them. It was a contrast, the bare and sordid room 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


173 


and the glowing webs with the gleam of the silk in many 
a fairy pattern. In an unknown cranny a-stolid Chinaman 
and his boy were producing finery destined in the caprice 
of Fortune to deck a beauty on the further side of the earth 
as she swept down the middle aisle or received homage 
in the ballroom. 

Yes, and later in that afternoon of strange memory we 
w T ere taken to a shop where perfectly elegant bargains in 



THE FIVE-STORY PAGODA 


embroidered silk were the reason for existence. It was there 
possible to witness the spectacle of a man with whiskers 
who enjoyed shopping. 

As that Christmas afternoon wore along, the dim lights 
in the canyons deepened, and the mystery of the uncanny 
city grew. From time to time we peered into houses in 
which grotesque idols or figures stood in small shrines, mute 
testimony to a faith ancient before Christ saw the star 
in Bethlehem. It took but little imagination to picture 
what might happen in that congested hive with fanatical 




174 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


worshipers of a narrow belief, were some ugly brawl to 
brew’. And yet, such was the moral effect of the viceroy’s 
strong right arm that no violence was offered. 

From the chill air of the narrow shafts, called streets, 
we journeyed, as the sun was fast westering, across the 
bridged canal to the Shameen, or foreign quarter, and the 
hotel square, from which we had started hours before, and 
there our coolies pestered us for cum shaw, or a gratuity, 
and there they melted away, satisfied with a few coins. 
There Mr. Bowman found us, and from the square we 
sauntered to the river front. It was with a sense of 
potential peril, and a memory of ribbons of gloom-shrouded 
lanes lined with a half-barbaric populace held back by the 
moral iron of the law, a memory of uncomprehended cus¬ 
toms and strange merchandise, of strong-limbed coolies, of 
pagodas and temples, of gorgeous Chinese lanterns, of silver 
and jade and lacquer work, of jet-black cues and shaven 
foreheads, of chopsticks and drying orange peel and jerked 
rat flesh, and of many an unknown product, that we of the 
West tramped to the waterside. 

In a few moments Mr. Bowman had us on a landing 
and was hailing a sampan. We boarded the clumsy, high- 
pooped craft and sat in the stern sheets, while John 
Chinaman poled in the bow and his amiable, chunky wife 
sculled in the stern. Mr. Bowman harked back over the 
years and the Pacific to the salad days when he played ball 
in the meadow of our town, in which he was more interested 
than in present-day Canton, but ere long I lured him to tell 
of river life on the Pearl, and he spun yarns about babies 
who are born in sampans and live out their lives in the 
small boats, and leave them only to enter Paradise. 

In a space not so large as a cable car a family of five 
may live. In it all hands eat and sleep. They do their 
fishing, their housekeeping; they raise their children and 
ducks and pigs; they peddle flowers; they dance and 
play their music; they wash (sometimes) and gamble 
(always). The simple life is lived, save when it becomes 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 1 75 

a strenuous life, if the father takes to piracy and is caught. 
It is a simple life in the open, for, barring a palmetto thatch, 
there is naught between the head and the heavens. Of all 
the swollen underworlds which turgid Canton has, that 
which is afloat is the most picturesque. 

Now, it was farewell to Bowman, who grew sober and 
silent in the final minutes, and the start on the Kinshan 
for the return to the Cleveland. For six hours we sailed 
down the Pearl with interchange of story and chat and 
anecdote. A Christmas dinner was served by John, in pig¬ 
tail, trousers like meal sacks, and, of course, the bare feet, 
which are de rigueur anywhere east of Cairo. It was mid¬ 
night when the tired excursionists trooped over the gang¬ 
plank to the ship. 

I found Little Joe fast asleep with the spoils of the 
Christmas stocking in his hands, the elephant of the flag 
of Siam at his cheek on the pillow. And that was the most 
inspiring sight of all that memorable Christmas in China. 
It was a Christmas of a kind to keep on the chosen page in 
the album of memory. It was,— but this chapter is 
already too long. 

Long though it be, a half page must be given to Hong 
Kong. You must know that Great Britain is the owner 
of the island of Hong Kong, and that the city which 
occupies nearly all of the island is named Victoria. The 
island was ceded in 1841, and became a colony two years 
later. From the water’s edge the land rises precipitously 
to a height of two thousand feet, terrace on terrace, boulder, 
path, and summit. Streets are wide and clean,— on the 
other side of the diameter from the Canton idea. 

We climbed on the funicular railroad till we seemed to 
be stabbing holes in the sky. At the terminus we left the 
thing of cogs and rails and started for the summit of the 
peak. On the way we passed a small barrack and had a 
short chat with a couple of Tommies, quiet, respectful, 
clean-shaven youths, of muscle, who are ready to defend 


12 


176 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


the British lion if anybody has the temerity to twist the 
animal’s tail. From the crest we enjoyed a view which has 
few superiors in this quarter of the world. But the view 
was not the only enjoyment for the dear ladies, for 
Hong Kong has many shops, bad, indifferent, and good. 
Shopping began in nearly as much earnest as was the case 
in Japan less than a week later. Sandalwood, copper-ware, 
and souvenirs were the backbone of the purchases, and on 
the last day, camphor-wood chests. These last were among 
the most sensible of the articles bought. I became the pos¬ 
sessor of a chest of fine camphor, tested by knife and auger, 
and have it now at home, ready to be of service when my 
grandsons are ninety years old. The next thing is the 
grandsons. 


CHAPTER XV. 


THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN. 


B ANZAI! glorious Japan, little land of lovely 
ladies, sturdy, comical men, and cameo children, 
the land where East becomes West, the country 
of the cherry and the chrysanthemum, of 
Oyama and Togo, of the fan and the kimono, of 
rickshaw men who care little for cum shaw, the land 
of the wooden sandal, the lantern, and the camphor 
tree, a land of quiet, untheatrical heroism, of thrift and 
courtesy and quaint efforts at English. Yes, banzai! “ Ten 
thousand years,” and happy years to you, fine little Toyland, 
where we meet the antithesis of France, for here the 
country’s capital is men, not money. It would seem to us 
that the leading crop was children, future heroes for 
Dai Nippon. 

It was Nagasaki, first of the Japanese towns which 
welcomed us. The harbor is a landlocked inlet, indented 
with coves. It is about three miles long and ranges in 
width from half a mile to a mile. Hills which would have 
appeared high to us, had we not just come from Hong 
Kong, shut it in. It has excellent holding ground at a 
depth of eight to ten fathoms. 

The city is at its eastern shore, and has a population of 
176,000. Its exports and imports for 1908 footed up to 
nearly forty millions. It is the capital of the prefecture of 
Nagasaki, and the Kiushiu railway has its western terminus 
there. It was in Nagasaki Harbor that the old Japan first 
received European vessels, back in 1578, and in the early 
times of European trade in the Far East it was Nagasaki 
that most felt the Occidental impulse. In the seventeenth 


178 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


century it marked a bloody persecution of native Christian 
converts. 

Barely had the ship made fast to a mooring buoy well 
out in the stream when a fleet of tiny tenders came puffing 
to the gangways. The commercial flag of Japan was flying 
from their sterns, the blood-red rising sun of imperial 
Japan, which we for the first time beheld in its homeland. 
Of course there was a gee whiz to find places in the boats. 
American parties in Japan have been few and small, and 
have traveled, as Pauline, who is in the high school, says, 
otio cum dignitate. And so it was that the very polite little 



Courtesy 0/ Thomas A. Peabody 

UNDER THE SUN FLAG 


Japs on the tenders and at the landing place were astonished 
when a frantic rush of heavy Occidentals swept down. 

Once ashore, we piled down on the two lines of rick¬ 
shaw men, one-on one side of the street and the other on 
the other. We found the squat little fellows full of a quaint, 
industrious courtesy. I was received with a good-natured 
and ceremonious bow, and was carefully stowed on the 
seat and a rubber apron was spread, for there was a hint of 
drizzle. Then I was asked where it was my “ honorable 
pleasure ” to be taken. It was my honorable pleasure to 
be taken to the post-office, yubinkiyoku, according to a leaf- 





AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 179 

let distributed at the landing by an enterprising merchant 
in the tortoise-shell line, who had printed on the cover page 
“ With a small vocabulary for taking up at town.” In 
the leaflet it was testified that “ the distinguished .peculiarities 
of tortoise-shell ware manufactured by Y. Sakata & Co.” 
were the latest fashion of style ” and “ the genuineness of 
material. ” It was Little Joe’s honorable pleasure to be taken 
to the post-office, and he mailed a post-card to John Manion 
with great glee. Then he mailed one each to Dorothy 
and Phyllis. 

In each rickshaw were two flags, an American and a 
Japanese. I grabbed mine and waved them to a Jap group 
on the sidewalk, and yelled a banzai. 

The Japs responded cordially, with quaint, formal bows, 
formal, yet good-natured and warm, withal. The men 
knew more of English than I had given them credit for, 
and most of them called out “ Hurrah! ” in a ceremonious, 
Harry Snell, five o’clock tea manner. Joe had already 
learned " banzai ” and when he shrilled it in his childish 
voice the polite Japs countered with “ hurrah ” with queer, 
but pleased formality. 

It was “ independent action ” the first afternoon which 
we spent in dear, hospitable Nagasaki. The tourists told 
the rickshaw haulers to take them, some to banks, where 
the passengers changed gold into yen and sen; some to 
money changers; some to temples, some to parks, some to 
hotels, some to the Commercial Museum, some to the 
water front, and some to shops. 

All along the way there were the two flags, the stars 
of the republic and the sun of Nippon. All along the way 
were beautiful women in the unfamiliar and gay costumes 
of the Land of the Rising Sun. 

A Japanese woman is a work of art. She has glossy 
raven hair, dressed in an artistic and picturesque fashion, 
massed in a midnight curve, and stabbed with rakish pins 
with jewelled heads and piratical shafts. She has a low, 
broad forehead and high, plump cheeks, underlaid with a 


180 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS F£OM THE WEST 

dark rosy flush, like vermilion seen through sherry. She 
has eyes dark as night, framed in drooping, almond-shaped, 
languorous lids. Her lips are generous. Her teeth are 
ivory, except when, for some freak, they are stained. Her 
stature is short. Her figure is built in a queer kind of a 
roly-poly buxom outline, at which you marvel, and which 
captivates you. 

She walks on cute wooden sandals having two high slats 
running athwartships under the ball of the foot. This 
curious footgear is called chiyoda-zori. (Half of the men 
bought chiyodas to take home.) The Jap woman wears a 
white sock with a pudgy pouch for the big toe, alongside of 
which the thong of the sandal passes. 

All in all she is a dream of midnight. Some of the 
wives on the ship fell to speculating as to the cause, if 
their husbands went ashore alone. Some of them raised an 
awful pother when husbands came back to the ship one 
tender later than the schedule. 

Late in the afternoon the American consul gave a recep¬ 
tion to tourists in his residence, situated on a high rock 
and approached by a long and not facile ascent cut in the 
solid rock. He is from St. Louis, and a credit to that city. 
It was his honorable pleasure to stimulate us with tea and 
sandwiches, and he made a. happy hit with the Clevelanders. 

In the evening the passengers were guests of the vice- 
governor, and were taken to a native theatre, in which they 
saw a play depicting a mediaeval Japanese feud. On 
Japanese fans at home we had seen costumes and poses which 
we considered not only grotesque, but impossible. Here we 
saw the original, and the fans were justified. The costumes 
equalled those in the fans, and the facial contortions rivalled 
the most extravagant phizes on paper. It was the same 
story with the attitudes. What the fans do not reproduce 
is the stringy nasal squeak which is the actor’s singing voice, 
a cross between a mosquito’s buzz and the tearing of silk. 

The next morning we were taken to Suwa Park, an 
eminence laid out with walks and gardens. In the park we 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST l8l 

paused before a stone tablet, in which was cut, in imitation 
of the original handwriting, the following: 

“ Nagasaki, Japan, June 25, 1879. 

“ At the request of Governor Utsumi Tadukevi, Mrs. Grant 
and I each planted a tree in the Nagasaki Park. I hope that both 
trees may prosper, grow larger and live long and in that growth, 
prosperity and long life be emblematic of the future of Japan. 

“U. S. Grant.” 

An entertainment was given for the tourists by a mer¬ 
chants association. It was in the form of songs and poses 
by dancing girls, some of the far-famed Geisha girls, who 
gave an exhibition in brilliantly colored kimonos, and con¬ 
cluded with a theatrical flutter of Old Glory and the 
Sun Flag. 

From the open-air theatre we were escorted to an open- 
air gymnasium, in which an exhibition of jiu-jutsu was 
presented, the tourists being this time guests of the munici¬ 
pality. The object of this particular style of wrestling is to 
enable a small man to cope with an assailant who is much 
larger. The curriculum includes five points or branches, 
throwing, holding, choking, dislocating joints, and striking. 
Lads of about fifteen or sixteen years gave the exhibition, 
in pairs. On appearing on the mats they knelt and made 
kotow. Then they went at it, hammer and tongs. Fencing 
followed the jiu-jutsu. The foils were bamboo rods some 
six feet long. The boys had it out to their hearts’ content 
in the thrust and parry of such debate. 

Evening brought a display of fireworks by the munici¬ 
pality, one especially Oriental in character, with dragons 
and palms and beasts of wondrous ugliness. It brought, 
too, a little later in the shank of the evening, a feast of 
lanterns. From the steep hillside came the distant globes, 
illuminating the streetside, and casting a mild radiance into 
the Japanese night. They passed in martial ranks along the 
water front, and turned into the interior of the city. The 
hues ranged from canary to deep, full orange. With the 
paper globes they cast a subdued, hazy light. Seen from the 


1 82 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


ship’s decks the bobbing blots of gay colors made a pic¬ 
turesque spectacle long to be remembered. The reflection 
in the harbor turned the surface into liquid fire, and for 
over a mile of the water front it glowed and gleamed with 
broken columns and points of dancing flame. 

There are temples a-plenty in Nagasaki, and he is hard 
to please who fails to find something interesting in one or 
another. Old carvings which represent ancient industries 
are in the musically named Matsuno-Mori temple, which 
is situated near the park and in a pretty grove. The 
Sofukuji temple is a Buddhist building of the Zen sect, and 
is for Chinese services. The main gateway and the entrance 
gate are in pure old Chinese style, a variety seldom found 
in Japan. The Daionji temple is of particular interest to 
many Christians, as it was founded by the Tokugawa gov¬ 
ernment long ago to draw Roman Catholic converts to 
Buddhism. It is a large building, and from it a convincing 
view of the city can be obtained. The religion here is an 
element which is rather mystifying for a time to men from 
the West. I was reminded of a saying which I heard, that 
the average Jap lived a Shintoist and died a Buddhist. 
Shintoism is the state religion, and it was defined to me as 
little more than a philosophy, a worship of the Mikado and 
of ancestors, whose spirits are believed at times to hover 
around some of the temples, more especially the spirits of 
men who have died for the Mikado and Nippon. 

Most of all I was impressed in Nagasaki by the chil¬ 
dren, cunning little chunks of living cameo, tiny tads with 
ridiculous heads and merry little faces and squat figures, and 
it was my honorable pleasure to yearn to take one home and 
exhibit the little comical rascal to the Ladies’ Aid Society. I 
saw them trudging around in bare feet on the stilt wooden 
shoes, saw their dark, little, wondering faces with that deli¬ 
cate ruddy glow under the satin skin, and marveled at the 
queer, pudgy figures in bright-hued blouses, and they mar¬ 
veled at me with innocent glee till I began to feel the 
miserable old sinner that I am. I would call out a 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 1 83 

" banzai! ” and they would laugh with the happy, innocent, 
trusting mirth of innocent childhood. What wonder is it 
that a mother in Israel leaned out from her rickshaw and 
waved her Jap flag, and asked of me: “Aren’t they just 
the dearest little things you ever saw?” 

One morning Little Joe was riding by a knot of chil¬ 
dren, and he waved his white flag with the red rising sun 
and hurrahed a treble " banzai! ” The little tykes tossed 
their brown hands and yelled the word in pleased delight, 
admiring Joe’s carrot hair and white skin just as much as 
he was “ rubbering ” at their stiff black stubble and almond 
eyes. Joe turned to bid them farewell with a “ sayonara” 
which he had early learned, and the little sons of midnight 
actually shrieked out their joy at his schooling. 

The heroic battle which some of the Nagasaki mer¬ 
chants wage with the English language has its humors. A 
leaflet was distributed to tourists, headed, “ The Letter of 
Invite of Mr. Y. Yezaki with Compliment.” It started 
with: “ On this honourable occasion to welcome your party’s 
visiting here, for the first place, Mr. Y. Yezaki presents 
his compliments and earnestly desires to have your visit to 
his finely established galery at the first, hoping to interest 
you with details.” 

The merchant asked the question in print: “You would 
be expositor of Japanese gardening?” and immediately 
below he printed: “By inspecting Mr. Y. Yezaki’s large 
confined garden with quaint the trees, scattered stones, &c. 

He also asked this: “Do you know the meaning of 
‘ Niwamise ’ ? ” and answered the conumdrum with the 
sentence: 

“ The ceremonial showing of garden fully decorated 
at night for which no special chance to see was given to 
strangers, having its origin in the festival of Suwa shrine 
usually performed on the night of 3d September. 

Then he proceeds to reveal a secret. 

“How you should feel restful seclusion?” is the ques¬ 
tion, and the reply is: 


184 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


“ The entertainment of tea and cake in our cere¬ 
monial style.” 

The merchant calls attention to music and went on thus: 

“ Koto, our only musical instrument handed from our 
fore fathers played by my daughter and the chorus by a band 
of girls in the same music heard in the most charming 
manner.” 

In Nagasaki harbor we coaled ship, the task being per¬ 
formed by women, who carried sacks of bituminous coal on 
their heads or passed them by hand from one stage to 
another, and worked for long hours with cheerful faces and 
untiring arms. Many of the women brought with them 
babies of a few months’ age, and either carried them for a 
time or stowed them in the boats or in nooks on the stages. 

When the hour came for leaving hospitable Nagasaki, 
delegations from the merchants’ association, from the 
municipality, from the Christian Endeavor Union of the 
city, and from other bodies came alongside the ship in 
launches and waved the American flags. It seemed as if 
every other Jap in the little boats had “ Old Glory ” in 
his hand. I saw more American banners in that last hour 
in Nagasaki than in the two days that I passed in San 
Francisco on our return. Bands played in two of the 
tenders, every air an American patriotic tune. When one 
of the bands rendered “ The Star Spangled Banner ” every 
Jap in the tender rose and waved his flag or his hat or a 
handkerchief, and some climbed to the rail and balanced by 
the funnel guys. 

On the Cleveland hundreds of American ensigns flut¬ 
tered and tossed. Dozens of Japanese banners were flaunted, 
for many of the tourists had already purchased the white 
fields with the sun.* A dear lady from South Bend, 
Indiana, besought one of the men to ascend higher in the 
shrouds and wave his Japanese banner still harder. Then 
she smiled most graciously at the author when he bent on a 

* At the next port scores of the passengers bought flags. I bought a Jap 
banner in nearly every port in Japan in which we came to anchor. 



AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 185 


great flag of the Japanese navy to a bamboo pole and waved 
it with might and main and tore a shred of mucous mem¬ 
brane from his throat with a convincing “ Banzai gun kan 
no hata Nippon!” The Japanese may not be according to 



Courtesy 0/ Colonel C. H. Case 

GROUP IN NAGASAKI 


Hoyle, but it was meant for “ Ten thousand happy years 
for the Japanese warship flag! ” And thus the Cleveland 
cast off, and thus we bade farewell to the Toyland Harbor 
and the hospitable people of the first port of call in the 
Land of the Cherry Blossom. 



CHAPTER XVI. 


YOKOHAMA and TOKYO; KAMAKURA. 


M ORNING found us in the inland Sea of Japan, 
one of the wonder spots of Nature. Heavily- 
wooded islets, many of them rocks of barely 
an acre or two in size studded the sea. Around 
some of these and between others the ship wormed and 
twisted, in some places so near that a biscuit could have 
been thrown from the hurricane deck to land. We saw 
two of our American warships, the West Virginia and the 
Maryland, in the course of the run to Kobe. We saw 
them turn and cavort among tiny islands, and could imagine 
the solicitude of the quartermasters or the helmsmen at 
their wheels. 

Kobe is in the southern part of the large island of 
Hondo, and is on the western shore of the Bay of Osaka. 
It was open to foreign trade and residence in 1863, and it 
has a deep and safe harbor. It lies along a fine, sandy 
beach, and near the base of a high range of hills. The 
inhabitants number nearly three hundred thousand. The 
exports and the imports total over one hundred and fifty 
million dollars. 

Near by are the Nunoniki Falls, the upper or “ Male ” 
fall being eighty-two feet in height, and the other, or 
“ Female ” cataract being forty-three feet. 

The Christian Endeavor segment of our party was wel¬ 
comed at a social gathering in Kobe College, a famous girls’ 
school maintained by the American Board, and at a union 
meeting held in a Japanese church. 

The stay in Kobe was short, barely long enough to 
allow the voyagers time to turn around and then take a 
train for Osaka. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 1 87 

Hitherto I have avoided the encyclopedic form, but for 
once allow me to nod: 

O-sa-ka (contraction of O-ye-sa-ka ) is a leading sea¬ 
port of Japan. It is also an important manufacturing and 
trade city. It is in Lat. 34 0 42' N. and Long. 135 0 31' E., 
20 miles from Kobe and 27 m. S. W. from Kioto. 

Osaka is built for the most part on low, level land 
and on both banks of the Yodo River and on the shore of 
Osaka Bay. Many canals run through the city, and it is 



A JAPANESE SCENE 


said that the bridges which span them are thirteen hundred 
in number. It was opened in 1868 for foreign residence and 
trade, and a foreign quarter was started on a river island. 
For years there were few in the quarter beyond the mis¬ 
sionaries and officials. 

The city is the headquarters of the Fourth Military 
District, and has a large garrison in Osaka Castle. I saw 
numbers of the brown soldiers in a kind of olive-drab uni¬ 
form, and smart, snappy soldiers they were. They had the 
air of well-fed, contented men, with an esprit de corps, 
men who were loyal and were proud of the traditions of 
their service. 


188 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


In Nagasaki our welcome had been such as to warm 
the very cockles of our hearts, but Osaka outdid even the 
cordiality of the Kiushiu city. As we passed from the 
station platform to the street we were met by the acting 
mayor and a delegation of city fathers and the metaphorical 
keys of the city were extended. A formal speech was made, 
and was responded to by a clergyman from North Sandwich, 
New Hampshire, in eloquent words, which spoke of the 
admiration which the tourists felt for Japan and their grati¬ 
tude for the cordial greeting. The closing words of the 
response were taken by a listener, and were quoted often¬ 
times during the rest of the stay in the country. They were: 

“ And so may the friendship between our two great 
nations continue as long as the sun rises on your beautiful 
Land of the Cherry Blossom and the stars glitter in the 
banner of our Republic of the Free.” 

Embarking in rickshaws, we went to Osaka Castle, 
cheered and welcomed all along the way by crowds with 
fluttering American and Japanese flags and waving hats or 
handkerchiefs. We were escorted into the great fortifica¬ 
tion, and one unreflecting youth began to take a series of 
photographs. He was discovered by a Japanese officer as he 
was taking the second snap, and was promptly squelched. 
The view from the platform, where once stood a five-storied 
donjon, commanded the land and the water for many 
miles around. 

In early times the site of the town was known as 
Naniwa no Kuni, “ rapid waves.” Old fables have it that 
when the first emperor approached the shore he met with a 
rough sea and high waves, and that the sight lingered in 
the imperial memory in such wise that the spot received its 
picturesque name. Later, in the fourth year of the Emperor 
Meiwo, a Buddhist priest built, on the hill where the castle 
now stands, a large temple and, still later, when his suc¬ 
cessor had become almost as powerful as feudal princes, 
walls were erected and moats were dug; thus the castle was 
started. Yet later the son of a peasant, who became known 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 189 

in Japanese history as the great Hideyoshi, rose to power, 
and became the head of most of the feudal Japanese princes 
of his time. He felt that Kioto, which was then the 
capital of the empire, was too restricted, and he determined 
to remove the seat of the government to Osaka. He began 
to extend the castle, ordering feudal lords to contribute 
huge stones and timbers of enormous dimensions to the 
glorious work. It is chronicled that he caused thousands 
of workmen from a total of ten provinces to lend their 
labor to the undertaking. When the giant task was com¬ 
pleted, the strength of the walls was unequalled in all the 
empire. So the story runs, and as we looked at the massive 
masonry and the miles of deep ditches and the great gates 
we could easily believe the castle to have been impregnable 
in those rude times, if defended by a force of resolute men. 
It is said that the castle is even now superior to any but 
the most powerful of modern guns. 

According to the old-time story, many of the blocks 
were brought from far-distant quarries. With the patience 
of Guenther, little brown Japs with common iron tools cut 
out cubes of twenty feet, and with backbreaking, heart- 
wrenching toil pushed and hauled them for miles, foot by 
foot, on wooden rollers and reared these mighty walls. 

Travelers who tell their tales of southern Europe say 
that nowhere have they seen stones larger than those here, 
whether in well-walled Roman forts or in citadels build by 
ancient Greeks. 

Returning to the center of the city, we had a fine dinner 
in a hotel, and at each cover found a neat box containing 
artificial flowers and like souvenirs, presented by a local 
newspaper. In fact, in every place in which ‘we tarried in 
Japan it was souvenir after souvenir, so many that a 
separate note-book would have been required to tabulate 
them properly. I regret to say that I failed to keep a list. 
Flowers, vocabulary leaflets, packages of tea, tea cups or 
saucers, hatpins,— these scarcely start the list, and nearly 
any member of the party can add to it from memory alone. 


190 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


Those Japanese days were filled with incident and change 
of scene, and the memory grows confused, unless refreshed 
by memoranda. 

Our next objective was Kioto, and for those who like 
that sort of thing here is something in the encyclopedic line 
about Kioto: 

“ One of the three fu cities of Japan, capital of the country 
from 794 to 1868, when the shogunate was abolished. Stands on 
the island of Hondo; Lat. 35 0 N., Long. 135 0 30' E.; is 47 m. 
from Kobe, via Osaka. Temples and shrines abound. Silk's, vel¬ 
vets, brocades, and cloisonne enameled ware are manufactured.” 

It was evening when the train drew into the station. 
It was bitter chill when the family started in rickshaws for 
the Myako Hotel, and Joe was energetic in the flaunting 
of the flag and the shrilling out of his banzai’s, for the 
exercise warmed his congealing blood. Once in the hotel, 
we hastened to our rooms. It was the first hotel in the 
country in which we remained over night, and the arrange¬ 
ments were on that account interesting. The apartment 
was large and was partitioned into three compartments of 
convenient size by the use of sliding Japanese rice-paper 
screens, easily adjustable or removable. The chill was 
removed from the apartment by the use of a small portable 
stove or brazier, which contained rather more than three 
tablespoons of a soft coal. By an inducement I persuaded 
the guardian of the corridor to bring in another stove. 

The next morning a number of the party gained admis¬ 
sion into the imperial palace, a building in the Japanese 
style and, to our eyes, conspicuous for a lack of furniture. 
Sliding screens and partitions distinguished the building. 
Another of the sights of the city was the bell of the temple 
Chion-in, a monster in metal, measuring eleven feet in 
height and nine and one-half feet in diameter. We had 
seen temple bells of almost every manufactured size from 
the dimensions of a pea in Rangoon to that of the Chion-in 
and more than one of us understood the famous lines 
of Kipling. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST I9I 

But by the time the party reached Kioto, temples and 
shrines and architecture and nearly every sight but the 
people were becoming old tales to the noble army of women; 
either that, or the shopping was especially attractive. The 
unvarnished truth is that half of the women of the expedi¬ 
tion developed in Kobe, Osaka, and Kioto a mania for the 
purchase of fabrics, cloisonne, and souvenirs of many a 
beautiful kind. It was scarcely to be wondered at, for the 
products were real, were ingenious, were dainty, and were 
also cheap. What appealed to the men more than to the 
women was the fact that in nearly every shop one price 
ruled. I have told the story of the sale of a sandalwood 
fan in Gibraltar for one shilling and of its mate for three 
shillings, and the attempted sale of that mate for six. Such 
experiences did not taint Japan. Prices were said by experts, 
both in and out of the party, to be ‘reasonable, and scarcely 
ever did they vary. 

At one time in our sojourn in Kioto Little Joe went 
afield, wandered off on a street, and then and there was a 
scuttling to find the explorer. When he was discovered 
he had purchased a kite and was taking a lesson from a 
couple of Jap boys. His Japanese was limited to " ohayo ” 
“ banzai and " sayonara ” The two Jap tads knew no 
English at all, but they already knew boy nature of a kind 
which rules the wide world over, and in the bounty of their 
hearts were assisting the carrot-haired lad from the Occident. 
Joe was astonished at the pother made over his exploration 
and assured his mother that he had been “ puffec’ly safe.” 
It may be said right here that thereafter Joe was armored 
with a tag around his neck containing his name and that of 
the ship and of the hotel at which we were housed for the 
time being. Thus our alarums were minimized. 

My own shopping in Kioto was of a primitive kind. I 
parted with a few yen and acquired several flags. It was 
easy to buy the ordinary commercial one, that with the fiery- 
red ball in the center of a snow-white field, but to gain a 
large and really beautiful specimen of the naval flag 
13 


192 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


required a bit more of time and effort. I voyaged to two 
different shops and sat cross-legged on two or three different 
Jap platforms, and lightened life for two or three laughing 
Jap maidens thereby, ere the yens went from my pocket to 
the treasury of a shop-keeper, and ere I could swell the 
shop-keeper’s surplus it was necessary to repeat the magic 
formula: “ Gun kan no hata Nippon ." The repetition 
appeared to hearten the merchant even as the French of 
M. le Capitaine Curtiss appeared to rejoice the interpreter 
in Cairo. The flag is now in the museum of a high school 
in fine old Connecticut, and on fete days in the school tells 
the story of Togo and the fleet of the Rising Sun to children 
who see their Stars and Stripes floating from the school staff. 

On the way back to Kobe, we made pause at Osaka 
long enough to receive a very welcome line of souvenirs 
in the shape of Japanese parasols, one for each voyager who 
tarried to take the gift. 

Now, we lay tied to a mooring buoy in Yokohama 
Roads. In some respects the marine stage of Yokohama had 
the same setting as that in the roadstead of Singapore. 
Flags from many a nation, near and away, floated in the 
chill air which came down from the sacred summit of 
Fujiyama. The British banner was, as always, to be seen 
in plenitude; the tri-color of the Third Republic, the 
ensign of the German Empire, that of Holland, and the 
banner of nearly every important maritime country were 
fluttering from jack-staffs and mastheads at one time or 
another in the seven days that the ship rode to the buoy. 
The banner of our own country was,— the pity of it — 
scarcely to be seen afloat, except when Japanese tenders flew 
it as a courtesy. 

Yet Yokohama is a port of lasting historical interest to 
patriotic Americans. It is the place where old Commodore 
Perry landed and executed, as far as he, himself, could, the 
first foreign treaty which the modern Japan has known. 
Brother of the winner of the battle of Lake Erie, 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


93 


Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry reached Yokohama 
with a letter from Washington, authorizing him to open 
international relations, a direction which he followed to 
such good purpose in 1854 that an instrument was signed 
on a spot which was pointed out to us, a spot, in the year 
of the old commodore’s advent, on the shore, but now, after 
the invasion of the water by “ made ” land, a short distance 
inland. When the treaty was made, Yokohama was barely 
more than a fishing village with a few hundred population. 
From that it has grown to three hundred and ten thousand 
inhabitants. 

The ship was our base while we forayed in and from 
Yokohama. Most of our meals were obtained on the 
Cleveland, but the luncheons in Yokohama were served in 
the Grand Hotel, which is one of the most commodious 
hostelries in the Far East. The hotel is on the kaigan dori, 
and commands a perfect view of the bay with the shipping, 
steamships from every navigable part of the globe, pic¬ 
turesque junks, and queer fishing boats. 

On the first afternoon a large fraction of the expedi¬ 
tion availed itself of the squadron of chartered rickshaws, 
which was lined up in two ranks at the landing, and was 
taken to different points of interest in the city. The rick¬ 
shaw men were delighted at our “ ohayo's ” and " banzai s " 
and were full of the quaint bows and queer, comical cour¬ 
tesy of their cousins in Nagasaki and Osaka. It was a 
cordial reception which Japan had accorded to us from the 
moment we set foot in Nagasaki, one on the opposite of 
the diameter from the cool and dismal aloofness which 
characterized Bombay and most of the earlier ports which 
we had visited. In little hospitable Japan municipality after 
municipality showered attention after attention and enter¬ 
tainments of one kind and another. 

On the return from a foray around the city, we were 
ascending Noge Hill. As the climb began the occupant of 
the leading rickshaw observed that his cooley was puffing 
and straining. 


194 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


“ Totnare ” he called out to the man. 

Astonished, the man came to a stop, thus obeying the 
order. Then the occupant alighted from the cart. 

"Yuke ” he said to the little Jap, who now began to 
understand. The Jap lifted up the thills and resumed the 
ascent, with the cart empty and the passenger walking at 
his side. As he continued the climb, the occupant of the 
next rickshaw, less of a student of the leaflet vocabulary, 
used the sign language to give like orders, not aware that 
in that particular case the cooley knew a bit of English. 
The orders were followed, and in a couple of minutes the 
action proved to be infectious and all the tourists but two 
in the sub-section were descending from their conveyances. 
The two exceptions were lame, but in a few moments they, 
too, were afoot, soon, however, to return to their seats, as 
the effort was too severe in their cases. 

In this manner the line made its way to the crest of 
the hill. The little brown men were pleased and grateful 
and the Americans continued afoot, seeing a long descent 
which would tax the rickshaw people nearly as much as 
the climb. About one-third of the way to the foot the line 
met a rickshaw coming toward the summit. A small Jap 
was hauling this. The occupant was a stalwart, heavy 
white man in a gray suit. He allowed himself to be drawn 
by the line, as men, women, and children were walking to 
save trouble for the haulers of their carts. I have a strong 
suspicion as to the nationality of that individual, but in the 
absence of certainty, I shall not proceed further. 

On another afternoon a section of the party was at the 
railroad station on the return from a trip to Tokio. The 
passengers passed out from the waiting-room to the space 
in front of the station and joined in a stream of travel 
which was setting toward the center of the city. As I was 
proceeding along what appeared to be a sidewalk I heard 
a bicycle bell ring behind me and, turning, saw a husky 
six-footer white jingling away in a petulant manner. The tide 
»of traffic was such that it was next to impossible for the 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


195 


pedestrians to dodge as rapidly as the wheelman wished, but 
he made no allowance for the conditions, but continued 
in the saddle and grazed more than one of the women as he 
ploughed ahead. There was no moral doubt in my mind 
as to his nationality, when I saw the fashion of his clothes, 
but belief is not proof. 

On the bluff is the temple of Fudomyoo, approached by 
two different sets of stone stairs. A set of steep, straight 
stairs is named otokazaka, or stairs for men. The other 
set, winding stairs, is named onnazaka, stairs for women. 
I could not but think that the onnazaka would be chosen 
by the individual whose honorable pleasure it was to keep 
to his rickshaw on Noge Hill, when our women were afoot. 

From the front of the temple is obtained a splendid 
view of the bay, the portion here seen being called Mississippi 
Bay, after Commodore Perry’s flagship. 

One morning found us on our way to Kamakura, once, 
in the years before Caesar invaded Britain, a large and 
powerful city, now a straggling country village. Long 
afterward, the city was, for two centuries and a half, the 
seat of government of the famous shoguns. The sleepy 
village nestles in a valley surrounded on three sides by 
picturesque hills, and it has the open Pacific on the east. 
Here and there are ancient temples, old gateways, and 
statues which tell of old-time glory and departed greatness. 
Traces, they are, of a splendor long since dead. 

Foremost among the sights is the bronze Daibutsu, 
beyond doubt the most famous monument in Japan. This 
giant image is approached along a walk of hewn stone 
leading through the middle of a broad and shaded court. 
The colossus sits on a broad pedestal of cut stone, a rich, 
glorious Buddha, an image of the self-sacrificing Indian 
prince who left the world and sought Nirvana, the great 
philosopher and teacher before whom three hundred million 
heads are inclined in hope and prayer. The image is one 
of the finest displaj^s of bronze work in all the world of 
art, and it was made by men whom we call heathen, and 


196 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

was built over three centuries before America was discovered. 

Would you apply a tape-line to the wonderful piece of 
art? It is forty-nine feet in height. Its circumference is 
ninety-eight feet. Across the eye is four feet. Measure an 
ear — it is six feet and six inches. We were told that the 
eyes were of pure gold, and that the silver boss weighed 
thirty pounds. 



DAIBUTSU, IN KAMAKURA 

With peacefully folded hands Daibutsu sits in deepest 
thought. Lafcadio Hearn writes: 

“ The gentleness, the dreamy passionlessness of these features,— 
the immense repose of the whole figure,— are full of beauty and 
charm. And, contrary to all expectation, the nearer you approach 
the giant Buddha the greater this charm becomes. You look up 
into the solemnly beautiful face — into the half-closed eyes that 
seem to watch you through their lids of bronze as gently as those 
of a child; and you feel that the image typifies all that is tender 
and calm in the Soul of the East.” 








AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


197 


Space forbids more than a reference to the Hachiman 
temple, a Shinto building, reached from a long, broad cause¬ 
way, with gates of stone and bronze; and to the legendary 
caves and temple gates on the island of Enoshima. 

TOKYO. 

And, now, it is on to the capital. Our fathers learned 
from old Peter Parley that Jeddo was the seat of the 
government of Japan. They learned little more from Peter, 
for before Perry, and in Peter’s time, little was known 
about the city. In 1868 the city was made the eastern 
capital of Japan, actually the real capital of the island 
empire, as Kioto has barely more than an empty title, and 
in that year the name was changed to Tokyo. 

Tokyo lies on the southeast side of the island of Hondo 
and on the Bay of Tokyo, and is divided into two unequal 
sections by the River Sumida. It is a number of large, 
sprawling towns, half fused, rather than a single city. It 
was opened to foreigners in 1869, and its population is some¬ 
where or other about two millions, probably over that 
figure. Along the river and the bay the land is low and 
level ; in the western part of the city the land rises into hills. 

The city is about ten miles by eight, and has fine large 
parks, many temples and shrines and costly statues, and 
public fountains. It has the splendid Imperial Hotel and 
other hotels in the European style and any number of the 
native kind. 

Owing to the size of the American party, it went to 
the capital in instalments, on successive days. One of the 
sections was invited to see the review of Imperial troops, 
and witnessed the passage in review of some twenty-five 
thousand men, the section having a block of the best seats 
on the reviewing stand. The Japs in uniform were smart 
and soldierly, and yet the main strength of the soldier is, 
all too few military men in the Occident know, their quiet, 
untheatrical patriotism, their readiness to do, dare, and die, 


198 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

without fuss or display, for the sake of Dai Nippon and 
the emperor. 

The Reverend Doctor Francis E. Clark, president of 
the World’s Christian Endeavor Union, was received by the 
emperor in the course of our stay in Japan. Since the 
presentation of former Vice-President Fairbanks no 
American had reached the imperial presence. Officials of 
Christian Endeavor Societies in the empire and numbers of 
missionaries had been exerting themselves to obtain the 
audience, and were exceedingly gratified when arrangements 
were completed. Etiquette forbids Doctor Clark’s telling 
what occurred during the meeting. 

His Imperial Majesty, Musuhito, has been for forty- 
three years the mikado of Japan, is fifty-eight years of age, 
a ruler not only born to the purple, but the natural pos¬ 
sessor of kingly qualities. He is the one hundredth ruler 
of the empire, a representative of a dynasty of great anti¬ 
quity, reaching back to the year 500. He ascended the 
throne at the age of sixteen. Since his accession the empire 
has rapidly chosen leading features of Occidental civiliza¬ 
tion. In less than sixteen years it has made itself felt as 
a power in the world, first in the conflict with China in 
1895, and subsequently in the superb fight with Russia 
nine years later. It is believed that her advances in military 
surgery in the emperor’s reign place her first in the world 
in that branch of science, as her general advance in military 
science places her well toward the forefront among the 
world powers. In sanitation her progress is almost equally 
conspicuous. 

The movement which Doctor Clark represented in the 
audience with the emperor has twenty-three societies in 
Tokyo, banded in a union. The president and the vice- 
president are Japanese who were educated in American 
colleges. The rank and file of the societies are largely 
students in Japanese schools. 

A reception was given by a nobleman to a section of the 
party which visited Tokyo on one of the days. On the day 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 1 99 

following, the section which went up from Yokohama was 
entertained in a theatre by members of a school for acting. 
A play was produced in Japanese style, with make-up, cos¬ 
tumes, and posturing in accordance with the teaching. An 
address of welcome by Baron Shubawaya of the Japanese 
party which had visited America a few months previous and 
had been received in many American cities, preluded the 
play. It was translated by the baron’s stenographer. 
Luncheon was served after the entertainment. 

Yet another section arriving on another afternoon was 
bidden to an open-air spectacle, in which acrobats and 
horsemen showed their agility and skill. 

Tokyo newspapers are a credit to the craft. Just as 
our party reached Japan, Secretary of State Knox’s overture 
in regard to the neutralization of railroads in Manchuria 
was made known. The proposition was exceedingly unwel¬ 
come to the newspapers in the capital, and was a maladroit 
piece of work, as a whole, but the press of the Japanese 
capital handled it with a dignity and self-restraint which 
were in sharp contrast to the secretary’s headlong and mis¬ 
taken diplomacy. The Tokyo press also treated the visiting 
Americans with the utmost friendliness and cordiality, and 
made the most flattering references to the visitors. 

Women seem to be employed to a considerable extent on 
the staffs of leading newspapers in Japan. Several of the 
women writers boarded the ship at one time and another. 
One of them was a well educated girl, to whom I was intro¬ 
duced and who presented with her card, reading: 


Miss Chiyo Yamazaki, 
Yurabucho, Kojomachi-hu, 
Tokyo, 

The Mainichi Demposha. 


She informed me that her name meant “ Thousand 
Years at Summit of the Mountain.” W^e talked for a spell 



200 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


about newspaper work and grew chummy, did Miss Summit 
of the Mountain and I. She asked me a question about 
some people over whom her tongue twisted and I asked 
her to write it out. Then Miss Summit wrote “ suffra¬ 
gettes.” She told me about Japanese print, did Miss 
Thousand Years, and explained that you must read from 
top to bottom and from right to left, that is, your right to 
your left, Thousand Years said. But if I keep on with 
her conversation I will be calling her Thous, and so, as a 
sailor would say, I will knock off. 

Back once more in Yokohama, we were presented with 
souvenirs; this time hatpins of silver with Japanese orna¬ 
ments for the women, and silver watch-charms for the men. 
We went to the Benten Dori for our last shopping before 
departing from the Land of the Rising Sun. On that 
street I ran across a trader called George Washington by 
sailors years before, because it was believed that he would 
not tell a lie. I purchased sandals and flags at his shop, 
and found that he deserved his name. 

And all too soon came the time for sailing. The speed¬ 
ing of the parting guest which warmed us in Nagasaki 
found a repetition in Yokohama. From tenders and small 
boats in the roadstead, Japanese waved the two flags, and 
from the rails of the ship fluttered Old Glory and the sun 
flag. Cheers from the boats were answered with cheers 
from the ship, and then the great steamer headed out for 
the open Pacific. 


“SAYONARA” 


CHAPTER XVII. 


YOKOHAMA TO HONOLULU. 


H EADING out to sea, we passed the armored 
cruiser Tennessee and several hundred of our 
passengers who still were on deck cheered the 
dark gray bulldog, whose jackies responded 
in kind when w r ord came to them from the officer of the 
deck. Just then the first bugle call for our dinner came, 
and the most ambitious of the tourists scurried to their 
cabins to get into evening dress, and the most sensible 
remained on deck to inhale whiffs of the condensed Pacific. 

In the evening the weather grew thick. The Pacific 
developed a nasty temper. The ship rocked and half her 
timbers complained. 

So ended the first day out of her run on her leg across 
the northwestern Pacific. 

I present the “ log ” of succeeding days in abridged form. 
Second Day Out. In the German language a bath is 
bad and women are dam-men, and it is not surprising to 
find that the Pacific is the stiller ocean. For water which 
is more than still it comports itself in an exceptional way. 
Waves bang the bow. The screws race. Winds are 

whistling and moaning. Spray flies up over the forecastle 
and frequently as high as the promenade deck. Racks are 
on dining-room tables for the first time since we sailed 
from New York. 

It was computed today that five of the tourists are 
remaining in Yokohama. 

Third Day Out. “ Was is los mit dem Stillen Ozeanf ” 
Blucher inquired this morning, as a lemon, handed out with 
a German pancake, slid off the plate and raced down the 


202 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


rack. The spelling is that of my accomplished German 
scholar Von Wedel, and ought to be irreproachable; at 
any rate Von is prepared to defend it against all comers. 
But to get back to the Pacific Ocean (which is getting back 
at us), it is on the rampage, still, and more so than before, 
which may be why it is called Stiller . 

Fourth Day Out. The Stiller ocean is becoming stiller 
in spirit and in truth. It is easier to write and more pas¬ 
sengers are writing. This Sunday morning saw a service 
in the forward dining-room, conducted by Doctor Clark, 
who took a double text: “ The sea is His and He made it,” 
and “ And there was no more sea.” His illustrations were 
timely and felicitous. From the line of his text he jour¬ 
neyed aside at one time to put in a word of regret and 
expostulation at the women who had insisted on shopping 
ashore on Sundays. 

Voyagers have been experimenting with remedies for 
mal de mer, and one of the remedies appears to have merit, 
but it won’t do to violate the advertising rule and to tell 
what it is. A man who was qualmish took two capsules 
three-quarters of an hour prior to lunch. In a quarter of 
an hour he was lively as a cricket, and when the bugle 
sounded for lunch he was the first at his table. He started 
with celery and consomme in cup and idled along to ham 
and eggs and roast beef with horse radish, and then turned 
to smoked ribs of pork with sauerkraut and puree of peas. 
Then he went on to complete a real nice little light lunch 
with potato salad, chocolate cream, American cheese, fruit, 
and coffee. The seasick remedy had nearly restored 
his appetite! 

The ocean is in more mellow mood. Thus ends this 
day. Course, E. by S.; wind, N. E.; barometer, discreet; 
temperature, 74; clouds, cirrocumuli. 

Fifth Day Out. The Pacific is fast getting over its 
pet. It is becoming smooth, and the sun shines fitfully 
between the flying scud. 

At a meeting this morning of the Travelers’ Club the 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


203 


royal welcome given to the tourists was for a time the back¬ 
bone for the talking. Most believed it to be an entirely 
spontaneous greeting from a friendly populace, but some 
hinted that it might be as much artificial as spontaneous, 



SOME OF THE ELECT 
Group on the port side of the boat deck 

and that behind it was the fine Italian hand of statesman¬ 
ship. A world-belter who was in Yokohama the day the 
news of the fall of Port Arthur arrived told the club how 
unconcernedly the inhabitants at first received the tidings. 
But,” said he, “ that night a listening ear might detect 















204 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


strange sounds. In the morning bunting and banners were 
flying. A demonstration was quietly organized, and the next 
day all Yokohama was pandemonium.” It was condensed 
extract of a celebration over a football victory so you might 
infer from the description which the traveler gave. 

Another speaker told of the decline of American mer¬ 
chant shipping, and said that even in San Francisco on 
merchant vessels of ocean-traversing size the Japanese flag 
was more common than “ Old Glory.” This led on to a 
discussion of the policy of subsidizing companies, which 
waxed warmish. 

A Nippon tea was given in the afternoon by Cleveland 
Chapter, No. i, Daughters of the American Revolution, 
in the faithful forward dining-room. Tables were decorated 
with the real thing in Japanese towels and spreads, and on 
them were Japanese teapots, wonders in the culinary king¬ 
dom, and quaint teacups with the double saucer and bottom 
of the Toyland of the Cherry Blossom. But the most 
cheerful sight was the dear ladies’ costuming. Arrange 
the colors of a maudlin rainbow on quilted silk and satin, 
snip out a ravishing kimono, add Japanese sandals, and build 
up the hair in a pagoda kind of architecture, which a mere 
man can worship, but not understand, and you have a slight 
conception of that mysterious costuming. Tea was served 
with Japanese ceremony which is this: 

“ On this honourable occasion (three salaams) will your 
honourable self condescend to deign to accept from my 
unworthy hand, this auspicious tea brewed by my good- 
for-nothing wife (three bows) and intended to refresh your 
condescending self (three kotows) that we may always 
remember your exalted kindness (three bows?)” 

This may strike a pragmatic reader as rubbing it in. 

In the evening about a hundred of the tourists assembled 
in the forward dining-room to play “ c-a-t,” a parlor game, 
by completing printing names opening with those letters, a 
highly intellectual pastime. 

Thus was the time slain in Lat. 32 N. and Long. 166 E. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


205 


Prizes were given to the most expert, articles which were 
interesting souvenirs of places visited early in the trip. I 
enter into detail as to this day in order to describe a bit 
of life on the Cleveland when she is 1,400 miles from land. 
But I do not refer to the ancient c-h-s-t-n-t, the posting of 
the ship’s daily run. 

One of the amusements of this part of the trip which 
the dear ladies delight in is the comparing of memory 
chains. This afternoon a wonder among memory chains 
was to be seen by the elect who had chairs on the port side 
of the promenade deck. It had fully forty articles in silver 
and ivory from some eighteen of the places visited in the 
course of the voyage. 

Some of the old sea-going travelers are deep in chess 
and checkers in the smoking-room. Somehow chess is less 
played than checkers. In fact there are but two of the 
grizzled sea-dogs who play that game with regularity. One 
is a Grand Army man, the one who pronounced the infantry 
“ fit ” at Manila. The other is a fine old soul from 
Brooklyn, who is to remove to Connecticut on his return 
to the City of Churches. 

Sixth Day Out. It is the opinion of a number on the 
ship that the Pacific is as capricious as a debutante. 
Yesterday it was smiles and sunlight. This morning it is 
drizzle and fog. A fog was overdue, for there are nearly 
a dozen sky pilots on board, counting a missionary who 
embarked in Yokohama. 

Doctor Clark this morning gave a talk on his audience 
with the emperor, procured through the good offices of 
Ambassador O’Brien, to whom Doctor Clark paid a kindly 
compliment at the opening of his lecture. He explained 
that the title of Mikado was little used among most of the 
Japanese. Literally Mikado means “ Honorable Gateway,” 
a circumlocution signifying an approach to a presence which 
should not frequently be lightly referred to. The present 
emperor is the head of a peerage of 902 and an empire of 
45,000,000 souls. It was in the old palace in Tokyo that 


206 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


Doctor Clark was received, not the new palace, which is 
furnished in the French style. The emperor is slightly 
taller than the average Japanese, and wears a grizzled, 
sparsely-growing beard cut in the Japanese style. He was 
in brilliant military uniform. The walls of the reception 
apartment were hung with rich and picturesque paper 
decorations. Doctor Clark told about the elaborate court 
ceremonial in the approach to his majesty. 

Previously Doctor Clark had been received in audiences 
by King Oscar of Sweden, King Haukon of Norway, and 
President Oom Paul Kruger. 

From the Mikado to the gymnasium is a near cry today. 
One of the articles in the gymnasium is a triumph called 
“ the camel ” apparatus, operated by electricity, if you slide 
a lever to a correct notch. A dear old puddinghead who 
desired to be a world-belter and thoroughbred traveler, yet 
told about going “ down stairs ” to the “ rear part ” of the 
“ boat,” mounted the camel this morning and requested 
Joseph to start the machinery. From long experience, 
familiar with the lever, Joseph slipped it. Presently the 
dear old puddinghead invited Joseph to stop the camel, but 
such action was not on Joe’s program at that moment. He 
kept the dear old fellow jouncing on the camel for five 
minutes before he slid the lever to its place. A better 
picture of righteous indignation than the old gentleman pre¬ 
sented you would never wish to see. Such is life among 
little lads on a modern steamship. 

Soon after the ship sailed from Bombay a playground 
was built for the nine little children who are in the party. 
It is located on a deck house on the boat deck, and is a small 
quadrilateral with boards on each side, enclosing a quantity 
of sea sand. There Jos whittles, and does wonderful things 
with his Japanese kite, with a dragon painted on it, which 
he purchased in Kioto. 

One of his playmates is a little girl called Kat Kin. 
Today Joe and Kat Kin developed a divergency, which led 
on to a combat, but soon they negotiated a treaty. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


207 


“ Your son and my daughter had a fight,” said the little 
girl’s mother, “ and then they kissed and made up.” 

“ They are setting a good Christian example to you and 
me, Madam,” I commented, but the lady seemed to argue 
that I was illogical. 

In the afternoon a notice was posted on a bulletin 
board announcing that on the next day the ship would pass 
the 180th meridian, and that there would be two days 
known as January 19th. 

Seventh Day Out. This morning the Travelers’ Club 
handled the question of the double day. A member from 
Staten Island proved to his own satisfaction that today was 
tomorrow, that there were two Wednesdays in the week 
and that the week had eight days. Another member demon¬ 
strated to marriageable young men that they were in peril, 
because this is a hidden leap year. 

A gentleman from Yonkers told about a partial ascen¬ 
sion of Fujiyama, the sacred mountain of Japan, in which he 
climbed to within five hundred feet of the summit. A gentle¬ 
man from Georgia talked about a visit to the Motomachi 
school in Yokohama. In one of the rooms he found boys 
singing a lively air about the greatness of Yokohama, in 
another a song about the beauty of Tokyo, and in a third 
he heard girls sing about heroes who battle for the country. 
He said that the little girls were filled with a firm and 
passionate enthusiasm in their nature. He wondered no 
longer that military patriotism was a consuming passion 
in the land of Japan. 

This evening a story-telling bee put a premium on 
travelers’ tales. One yarn dealt with seasickness, which 
has flourished but two of the ninety-six days of the trip, 
to date. A passenger who lay hors de combat in his 
steamer chair was accosted, so the story ran, by a good 
Samaritan, but in his languid state was unresponsive. 
Thereupon the good Samaritan flaunted a piece of raw 
pork seasoned with Worcestershire sauce. 

“ Take this,” said he, “ it’s certain death.” 

14 


208 as far as the east is from the west 


The victim recovered animation for a moment. 

“ I’m seasick, he confessed, “ but I’ll get over it. You’re 
an idiot, and you won’t get over it.” 

January igth, the second one. Antipodes Day. Eighth 
Day Out. Everjrbody is upside down and tangential over 
this double-day problem. One man shows beyond dispute 
that yesterday was (is) today, and that today is (will be) 
tomorrow. A lass who is anxious to put the date of the 
proposal on her engagement ring is in two minds, whether 
to engrave January 19th, or January 20th. 

It is admitted that for one day (or is it two days) even 
the best men on board are living a double life. 

At dinner the menu card bristled with allusions to the 
day and “ international ” ice-cream was served in the shade 
of confectionery simulating the “ date ” tree. This evening 
there is an antipodal dance on the port side of the prome¬ 
nade deck. 

Ninth Day Out. This morning was marked by a lec¬ 
ture on the great pyramid. In the evening a literary 
contest attracted to the forward dining-room passengers who 
completed in locating in book or play fifty well known 
characters. Prizes were given to the two ladies best read, 
and to the men corresponding to them. A Josh Billings 
spelling bee followed. The two sides were spelled down 
by Josh’s “ disseaze.” 

Tenth Day. This morning a Canadian Methodist, 
who has been for twenty years a missionary in Japan, gave 
a talk on religious conditions in this country. He explained 
that modern Shintoism is largely taken up with ceremony 
connected with the worship of imperial ancestors. Shintoism 
is the state religion. Buddhism and Confucianism have 
produced many noble lives, but to a number of the leading 
public men of Japan the nation seems to be drifting away 
from Oriental religion. It may drift towards the Christian 
religion, Mr. Coates said. 

This evening sees a progressive whist party, on the 
lines of a progressive five hundred party given a few 
evenings ago. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


209 


Eleventh Day. The Canadian missionary gave this 
morning a continuation of his talk on Japanese religions. 
He told about the Y. M. C. A. work in the empire, and 
said that a number of the Japs belonged at one and at the 
same time to two or three of prevailing religions, those of 
Confucius and Buddha and Shintoism. 

This afternoon a wireless telegram came explaining 
that the old coastwise shipping law might interfere with 
the landing of passengers at Honolulu, a law operating in 
the case of a passenger who embarks from American ports 
and lands in another American port, if he sails on a ship 
under a foreign flag, and imposing a fine of two hundred 
dollars on the foreign company for each passenger making a 
final disembarkation. As eight passengers have filed declara¬ 
tions for Honolulu, and wish to stay several weeks, it would 
impose on the company a fine of $1,600 in Honolulu. It 
would impose a fine of $128,800 for the final disembarka¬ 
tion of the others in Sap Francisco. There is a lively 
interest in this unexpected development on board the ship. 

This evening witnessed a fancy-dress ball, one of the 
most unique, perhaps, which the Pacific ever produced. A 
hundred dancers in costumes and mask met in the grill room 
and on the poop, and led by the ship’s band marched to 
the port side of the promenade deck, the first officer in 
glittering full dress escorting a lady in dignified black. The 
band moved into a flag-bounded reservation, in which the 
American and German ensigns flaunted side by side in the 
Pacific wind. The first officer led the maskers in lines 
and curves before half a thousand eyes. A feature of the 
parade lay in the uncommon fact, call it a phenomenon, that 
each costume was the real thing, purchased in its own home¬ 
land by the wearer, himself or herself, of a dealer who 
guaranteed its accuracy. 

Thus a night’s sail from Honolulu men and maidens 
who have voyaged twenty thousand miles of salt water 
met, on the other side of the world from their homes, to 
represent a dozen nations. Young fellows put Occidental 


210 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


blood and muscle inside Japanese fabrics. Young girls 
danced in costumes from Khandy. A young fellow footed 
it in the rig of a Nagasaki rickshaw coolie. There were 
two John Chinamans, or John Chinamen, or Johns 
Chinaman, in scarlet-buttoned black satin skull cap and 
cue. A little girl flitted out upon the paraffined deck in 
geisha costume down to high wooden sandals and tabi. 
Mandarin coats (the real thing) came out to the number 
of twenty-five. But what can mere man say about things 
such as these? Is it too much to repeat that the ball was 
one of the most unique, perhaps, which the Pacific ever 
produced ? 

Twelfth Day . We sailed into Honolulu harbor early 
this morning, and the ship was boarded by harbor officials. 
It was learned that the cable had been flashing, and that 
Uncle Sam, back in the treasury department and the 
attorney-general’s office in Washington, had been studying 
over a new problem, a situation not contemplated by the 
fathers when they enacted a coastwise shipping law to 
discourage from traveling under a foreign banner American 
passengers who wished to sail from one American coast to 
another. It was said that San Francisco was not in the 
Union when this law was framed, and that Hawaii was a 
kingdom little better than barbaric, and that the state of 
affairs in which Americans would sail from New York to 
land from the same vessel in Honolulu and San Francisco, 
as American ports, was not then conceivable. And, so 
among the many new situations in this pioneer cruise is this, 
which may well come before congress in a short time. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


THE PARADISE OF THE PACIFIC. 


O FF Diamond Head the ship was greeted by 
launches containing delegations from Honolulu 
Christian Endeavor Societies and from a local 
lodge of Elks, which had come sociably out 
almost side by side to welcome the world-belters. A choppy 
sea was running and it so happened that the Elks’ launch 
fared ill. As the boat went hors du combat a Christian 
Endeavor launch steamed to the scene and began trans 1 
ferring the antlered herd on board. Then and there was 
witnessed a wonder of the deep, a phenomenon new, per : 
haps, to history, Endeavorers and Elks consorting on a 
Sunday morning and singing, the Endeavorers, hymns, and 
the Elks chants of their own kind. And ere long some of 
the Elks grew ill, not because of the new environment, but 
because of good living and the swell off Diamond Head. 

For most of the tourists it was the first glance at the 
far-famed Kanakas, and many eyes rested curiously on the 
comely Hawaian lasses, broad of beam and stocky and dark 
hued. The girls might have had more beauty, but they 
had voices, and their hymns charmed even the sinners on 
the Cleveland. 

The mayor and a delegation constituting a welcome 
committee came to meet the ship. A greeting like that in 
Manila and the welcome in Nagasaki warmed our hearts 
at the landing. From the pier flags were fluttered, hats 
tossed, handkerchiefs shaken, and hands waved. A 
Hawaiian band played. Visitors who had boarded the ship 
prior to the landing distributed “ Aloha ” buttons. As the 
gangplank was run out a small army of white and colored 


212 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


brethren closed around its shoreward end, and as the world- 
trotters passed down, each was decorated with a lei, or gar¬ 
land of flowers. Fragrant carnations and strange tropical 
blooms made the leis odorous, as well as brilliant. Of the 



Hum 


OFFICERS ON THE BRIDGE 
Captain at the Marine Telegraph 

leis, some were large and were placed over the heads and on 
the shoulders of the tourists and some were small and were 
dropped on men’s hat crowns. It was the glad hand and a 
feast of flowers. In overhauling a little old well-worn 
note-book I found this about that scene: 

“ Our entry into Honolulu is like Bonaparte’s into Milan.” 













AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


213 


The Elks took care of their own, convoying them to 
automobiles. Our Christian Endeavor people were also 
taken care of, and the main body of the trotters were con¬ 
ducted to trolley cars for a ride. Our spin took us into 
the residential section, a section not unlike what some of us 
later saw in that lovely city, Pasadena. It led us by little 
villas and charming bungalows, tropical sunshine overhead 
and masses of buoyant greenery beneath. The electric rick¬ 
shaw carried us by open dwellings with broad verandas 
half smothered in a riot of green and illuminated by flaming 
blooms. Swaying palms with graceful fronds rose over 
many of the homes. A lawn as green and fresh as is found 
in the neatest New England town in June was at the side 
of each dwelling. The section was like one garden; what 
wonder that in song and romance Honolulu is known as 
the Paradise of the Pacific? 

It might be claimed that but for the missionary it would 
be a question whether Honolulu would have its lawns in 
the perfect condition of today. The first missionaries found 
the island destitute of true grass, as we of New England 
look on grass. Grass seed would not catch, or at least did 
not. Then word went back to Massachusetts, and the next 
worker who sailed for “ the Sandwich Islands ” had in his 
kit a number of grass roots, which he carefully watered and 
tended on the voyage, which was made by the way of the 
Horn. When the missionary reached Diamond Head all 
but two roots had perished. That couple were the great 
grandparents of at least ten per cent, of the true grass in 
Honolulu, so the story goes. From that tale in nature the 
missionary takes a simile, and is encouraged in his work 
in the islands. 

There is much of romance in those distant first days of 
the missionaries in Hawaii. I have at hand at this moment 
an old-time book, now rare, written by the widow of Asa 
Thurston, pioneer missionary to “ the Sandwich Islands,” 
and published in Ann Arbor, a fascinating volume made up 
of letters and sketches, grave and gay, giving lights and 


214 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

shadows, some of the trials and some of the joys and some 
of the sorrows of the missionary life of that time. In the 
preface, written in Nuuanu Valley, Mrs. Thurston says: 

“ In the silence and solitude of night, with my study lamp, I 
took the writings of 1819; I read and re-read them. Thus 
engaged, I was lost in reverie. I was young again and saw my 
father’s family surrounding me, loving and lovely.” 

The little book opens with a letter from the future 
Mrs. Thurston, then Lucy Goodale of Marlboro’, West 
Parish, Massachusetts, to her favorite sister, Mrs. Persis G. 
Parkhurst of Plainfield, New Hampshire, in which a mis¬ 
sionary spirit is shown. Then it progresses to an entry in 
the journal, telling of an unexpected call from a cousin, who 
led the way for the marriage to Mr. Thurston, then a 
senior in the Andover Theological Institution, soon to sail for 
the islands. The progress of the engagement, the marriage, 
and the start of the missionary party are told. On October 
17, 1819, seventeen people, headed by Asa Thurston and 
his bride, were organized into a missionary church to be 
transplanted “ to the Pagan Islands of the Pacific.” In the 
party were a physician and his wife, a printer and his wife, 
and a farmer and his wife and five children. Three con¬ 
verted native youths were also among the voyagers. 

Six days later the little band embarked on the brig 
Thaddeus from Boston for a dwelling place among (I 
quote from this quaint little book) : 

“ barbarians, there to cope with a cruel priesthood of blood-loving 
deities and to place ourselves under the iron law of kapus, 
requiring men and women to eat separately. To break that law 
was death. It was death for women to eat of various kinds of 
food, such as pork, bananas, cocoanuts, etc. It was death for her 
to enter the eating house of her husband. The choicest of animal 
and vegetable products were reserved for the male child; for the 
female, the poorest. From birth to death, a female child was 
allowed no food that had touched her father’s plate. It was death 
for a woman to be caught looking at an idol’s temple. When she 
passed one, she was required to turn her face another way.” 


One letter tells of the voyage, startlingly different from 
the trip on the comfortable Cleveland. It tells about a 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


215 


deck sprent with a boat, hogsheads, barrels, tubs, cables, 
and ropes, and alive with a dog, cats, hens, ducks, pigs, and 
men, women, and children. The brig passed around Cape 
Horn, and after a voyage of one hundred and fifty days 
from Boston the little band saw Hawaii looming on the 
horizon. Thenceforth the book is filled with descriptions 
and stories of romantic interest. 

The mist of history enshrouds the early story of these 
remote islands. The Hawaiian race is of original 
Polynesian extraction, of some far type which ethnologists 
can only conjecture. Its tongue is a cousin to the language 
spoken in Stevenson’s Samoa and to that in Tahiti. It is 
a strangely musical language, with five vowels and only 
seven consonants, one which adapts itself to the sad and 
simple melodies of the music of the islands. 

Out of the mistland of early time it seems to be estab¬ 
lished that, in the thirteenth century, a tempest-tossed 
Japanese junk touched at the island of Maui. Three cen¬ 
turies later the survivors of a wrecked Spanish ship bound 
from Mexico to the Philippines landed in the southern part 
of Hawaii. They were for a time regarded as some strange 
species of demi-god, and they intermarried with some of the 
natives, starting a strain that is still discernible in a lighter 
complexion and in more carefully chiseled features, distinct 
in some cases, at least, from the broad head and low brow 
of the native stock. Later in the century Gaetano sighted 
one of the islands, and twenty-five years after him old 
Mendena located the island of Kauai. Then for over two 
centuries Father Time left these beautiful stray children 
of Mother Nature alone in the waste of waters, far from 
the trail of the few explorers who ventured into the 
Western Ocean. It was reserved for that adventurer of 
good and evil fame, Captain Cook, to really discover the 
islands in good truth. That son of a Yorkshire farm 
laborer spent the greater part of two years, off and on, in 
the Pacific; and in his third Pacific voyage made the islands 
and took a number of notes and observations. He ranged 


216 AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 

far to the north and, returning, became involved in a 
squabble over a stolen boat and was killed in Hawaii. He 
named the group after John Montague, the fourth earl of 
Sandwich, who had aided him in several ways, a noble who 
was desperately attached to the festive tiger of the gaming 
table and counted as lost the moments spent in eating, and 



Courtesy of John P. Davidson 

FANCY DRESS BALL 


consequently split buns and meated them, for the sake of 
economizing time, thus becoming the sire of the sandwich. 

Peopled from distant South Sea islands in far distant 
time, the islands were but little developed when Cook lost 
his life. The natives had passed through the stage of 
savagery and were in that of a queer feudalism. The land 
was held in a military tenure. A dozen years after Cook’s 
death an able chieftain named Kamehameha warred against 











AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


217 


other chiefs and gradually extended his rule, aided by 
American whalers who brought firearms to him and gave 
the warrior a great advantage over his opponents, who were 
still in the Stone Age, as far as weapons were concerned. 
He conquered the remainder of the Hawaiian archipelago, 
and garnered the islands into a centralized monarchy. He 
was succeeded by his son, Liholiho, under the title of 
Kamehameha Second. 

And now we pass from an era little clearer than semi¬ 
legendary to one which inaugurates the real entrance of the 
Hawaiian Islands into the edge of civilization. Less than 
a year after the new king ascended the throne a company 
of seven missionaries and their wives landed in Honolulu. 
It had sailed from Boston five months after the second 
Kamehameha had become king, and had sailed because of 
appeals made by Hawaiians who had served as sailors on 
deep-sea American ships and had reached Boston. 

In the Hawaiian Islands, as perhaps nowhere more in 
the world, American Congregational missionaries achieved 
enduring and marvelous success. Half of the people were 
taught in a few years to read and most of that half to write. 
The Ten Commandments were adopted as a basis of laws 
and then an extended book of laws was adopted under the 
influence of the missionaries and the high standard of edu¬ 
cation set by the early missionaries has long been followed. 

For over fifty years the professions in Hawaii have 
attracted graduates of leading American universities. The 
first public school laws were passed in 1841, and they have 
been improved to keep pace with the growth of modern 
education. The Territorial Normal School has a wide 
scope, and includes manual training alongside other 
branches. Its pulse first stirred to the initial missionary 
teaching. The territory has an institution of higher learn¬ 
ing in Oahu College, founded nearly sixty-five years ago 
as a boarding-school for the children of missionaries. A 
College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts began in 1908 
its first full school year, and is now largely equipped with 


2l8 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


commodious new buildings on a splendid tract in Honolulu. 
In a direct line of work the influence of the early mis¬ 
sionaries is seen in the many churches, the number being 
about two hundred in the territory. When it is remem¬ 
bered that probably about seventy-five thousand or eighty 
thousand inhabitants, or over a third of the population, are 
Buddhist or Confucians or other non-Christian religionists, 
it will be seen that the proportion of churches is large. 
Most of the Japanese and the Chinese in the territory are 
of recent date, having come within a quarter of a century. 

One of the most lively and most able newspapers which 
I read in the course of the voyage is published in Honolulu, 
the Pacific Advertiser, a sheet which is especially successful 
in the use of cuts. I spent a pleasant half hour in its 
office and learned a number of points about the city from 
its wide-awake editor, Mr. Matheson, whose opinions are 
the result of careful study and an analytical mind. The 
city has two other daily papers which are printed in English 
and has a Chinese daily and four Japanese dailies; to round 
out the inventory, allow me to mention semi-weekly Chinese 
and Portuguese papers and a number of weekly and monthly 
publications, including religious journals. 

In 1891 Liliuokalani became queen of Hawaii. A pro¬ 
gressive party justly suspected her of an ambition to 
increase the royal power at the expense of the people and 
she was dethroned and a provisional government was 
installed. Following a tangle of diplomacy a republic was 
established, after the deposed queen had refused to grant a 
general amnesty, an action which would probably have led 
to her restoration. Sanford B. Dole was the first president 
of the republic. August 12, 1898, the islands were formally 
annexed, and two years later Hawaii was organized as a 
territory, with Dole as governor. 

The sad history of Liliuokalani is now regarded with 
pity in many parts of the'territory. The melancholy spec¬ 
tacle of a heart-broken old woman, who, whatever the 
faults of her advisers, and, perhaps herself, desired to return 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


219 


to her childhood home and die among scenes which were 
once the dearest on earth to her, appeals to a people given 
to romance, as are most of the Hawaiians. 

It is hard to picture the charm of the little cottages 
which we saw in the course of the trolley ride, bits of the 
homeland out in the mid-Pacific, between the prong of the 
Alaskan islands and the remote South Sea. The charming 
little dwellings have a beauty which is American, along 
with the al fresco type of the tropics. They combine a 
picnic’s temptation and a home’s comfort. With the 
expanse of indigo in front, the tropical sky fleeced with 
faint clouds overhead, with the great Diamond on one side 
and a city framed in luxuriant and eternal green on the 
other, with the wooded mountain behind, with tempering 
breezes from the ocean or odor-laden airs from the intervale 
they are in the midst of some of Mother Nature’s fondest 
offerings. Think of one of the most entrancing of our own 
May days, when sunshine, balmy air, apple blossoms, lilacs, 
and a smiling sky invite those to rejoice who can, and your 
memory pictures a day like the average here in Honolulu, 
so we are told and so we believe. To that day add what 
we saw, an occasional light cloud just low enough to cause 
the lightest of rains for a moment, just fleeting enough to 
bring to the eye a fast-fading rainbow. Of the islands 
which we saw Ceylon alone has more to offer than 
Oahu shows. 

Oahu is the third largest of the Hawaiian Islands, and 
has some six hundred square miles. Hawaii is the largest, 
anfd has some four thousand, being a little smaller than 
Connecticut. Honolulu is the largest city in Oahu and the 
group, and is the capital of the Hawaiian Territory. Its 
population is forty-five thousand. Hilo is the second city; 
it is situated on the island of Hawaii, the largest of the 
islands. The population of Hawaii, the island, is sixty 
thousand, and that of the territory is about two hundred 
and twenty thousand. 


220 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


In the course of the trolley ride on the morning of 
arrival we passed a statue of King Kamehameha First, 
“ the Napoleon of the Pacific.” The old warrior lives in 
stately bronze. He is armed with an old-time spear and is 
in the picturesque costume of an early day. 

We passed, too, Honolulu’s first frame house, built by 
a missionary from Boston in 1821, and the Kawaiahao 
church, built of coral and shell carried by Hawaiians from 
the seashore a quarter of a mile and more away. 

On the electric rickshaw we slid out beyond to Waikiki 
Beach, a narrow curve of shingle with creaming breakers 
reaching for nearly half a mile, and a fringe of graceful 
palms and heavy-foliaged hao trees as its inside boundary. 
In the shade of a noble and spreading hao tree in the court 
of the cool Moana Hotel sat a Hawaiian brass band, peer, 
may you believe it, of even the splendid Philippine 
Constabulary band which we heard in the Malacanan 
Palace back in Manila. The Filipinos had played, with 
acuracy and dash, selections which required brilliance in 
execution. The Hawaiian band played some of the same 
general kind, but they and their hearers prefer the melan¬ 
choly melodies of their own islands, simple and tuneful airs 
of an inexpressibly sweet nature. The airs are tender and 
sad, almost weird. They are filled with the romance of 
music, with a quality which allures the imagination, and 
the trained musician forgets for the moment the art as he 
feels the charm of the heart and the poetry behind the 
simple minors. 

One of the songs is the far-famed “ Aloha Oe ” of the 
unfortunate Queen Liliuokalani, last sovereign of the 
kingdom. Others are strains of sadness, set to song. They 
find expression more feelingly in music than in words. Still 
others are love songs which cast the spell of musical romance 
around their theme. Both the air and the Hawaiian, words 
are liquid music. In the judgment of many masters of 
melody the Hawaiian tongue is as susceptible to music as 
the Italian is. 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


221 


One of the selections which we heard was orchestral, 
and it involved pauses by the instruments which were occu¬ 
pied by singing by the players, a method or device which 
is frequently employed, so we were told. 

On the way to Waikiki is the famous Aquarium, truly 
a wonderful spectacle. Few outside of the experts believe 
prior to seeing the fish that the waters harbor such bril¬ 
liantly hued creations. The Aquarium is pronounced to be 
the latest word in the piscatorial line. 

One of the days spent in the capital was a Sunday. 
The Reverend Doctor Clark was invited to speak in the 
Union Central church, a large and stately building. The 
doctor preached to a congregation which filled every seat 
in the auditorium and nineteen-twentieths of the seats in 
the gallery. White, brown, and black were in the gather¬ 
ing, nearly as many hues as there were in the Christian 
Endeavor rally in the Cushing Memorial Hall in Rangoon. 
In the evening Doctor Clark spoke in the native church, 
called Kawaiahao. Before the worship started, the church 
was crowded to the outside steps, and numbers were 
turned away. 

Probably in no other city is the ratio of Christian 
Endeavorers larger per capita than in Honolulu. The city 
is the most quiet and orderly on a Sunday of any which the 
voyagers visited. It is especially observant of the old-style 
Sunday. For that reason some of the Germans of the ship, 
who were accustomed to the continental Sunday of Hamburg 
and Berlin, viewed Honolulu with mingled feelings. 

The early religious training Hawaii maintains largely 
in consequence of its enforced isolation from San Francisco. 
The century-old “ coastwise ” shipping law, which fines a 
foreign ship carrying passengers between the two cities, limits 
communication. Although the Cleveland sailed from 
New York she technically violated the law and she was 
liable to a fine of about $128,000.* The cable was kept 

* A ruling of Attorney-General Wickersham after the return of the paity 
excepted a vessel, sailing from an Atlantic port around the world to a 
Pacific port. 



222 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


busy for a time over questions connected with the 
matter. 

The city has a direct connection with San Francisco 
by cable and with Asia by way of Midway Island, Guam, 
and the Philippines. The main islands of the territory are 
connected by wireless telegraphy. 

There are twenty-six miles of trolley in the city. There, 
are five railroads in the territory, the longest extending from 
Honolulu to the extreme northern point of Oahu. 

The distinctively Hawaiian sport is the world-famous 
surf riding. Boys stand on surf board and make progress 
inshore over the crests of breakers, keeping their balance 
where novices, no matter how T strong and agile, fall even 
at the start. 

Sad to say, the Hawaiian population is declining. Here, 
in one of the beauty spots of the earth, the natives w r ho 
have enjoyed the bounty of nature are in danger of extinc¬ 
tion. Tuberculosis and diseases are in part responsible for 
the situation, but race suicide is still more the cause. An 
aversion on the part of Hawaiian wives to domestic care 
spells the principal reason. 

A report printed this summer shows that the great 
white plague kills over twice as many Hawaiians per thou¬ 
sands as it does of all other races combined, in Honolulu. 
The figures were compiled by health authorities and were 
published in the course of the campaign on the prohibi¬ 
tion question. 

In all the twenty-four thousand miles traversed by the 
ship in the memorable journey from West to East we saw 
but one island more enchanting than Oahu. Ceylon alone, 
ifn all that long voyage into the eye of the rising sun, 
showed more allurements of sea and sky, forest and moun¬ 
tain, valley and stream. Off Singapore and Java we saw 
summer seas glistening in the sun, but among them no such 
pictures of indigo and white as are painted off Waikiki. 
And, unless it be in Ceylon, nowhere have we seen such 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


223 


foliage, eternal and buoyant, such blazing blooms, such 
brilliance in coloring, such massed greenery, and such grace 
in palms and garlanded heights as here in Oahu. And even 
Ceylon did not flaunt the delicate, fast-fading rainbows which 
glorified Honolulu. 

For the people of the paradise of Ceylon our feelings 
will vary. But for the people of hospitable Honolulu and 
for their warm blooded aloha nui only the fondest gratitude 
will be felt. 


15 


CHAPTER XIX. 


HOME AGAIN. 

O NCE more out on the Pacific, and this time headecf 
on the arc of a great circle for the Golden Gate, 
the portal of God’s Country. It was a memor¬ 
able trip, and all hands were ready to go home 
and brag about it to home-keeping bodies and to world- 
belters in posse. 

Barely were we out again on the ocean when fore¬ 
handed men and women who had traveled far on salt water 
quietly ’gan to seek the carpenters and the baggage-master 
with an eye single to boxing and crating merchandise which 
was bulky. Especially did the owners of camphor chests 
find help, ere the choicest of the timber and the soap boxes 
were pre-empted. Wise were they who obtained early 
selections, for not only did they secure the best, but they 
concluded the misery of packing several days before land 
was sighted. 

There was a divergency of judgment among members 
of the same happy families in this martyrdom of packing. 
One good lady was possessed of the fury, even as thrifty 
housewives are seized with the mania of cleansing in the 
jocund month of May in good old New England, and 
scrub and renovate till the house is like a new pin and their 
husbands are minded to cumber the earth no longer. She 
went into the dim, religious light of the after baggage- 
room and packed and stowed till her lord drew her away, 
almost by main force, declaring that he would rather have 
a well wife than an orderly set of trunks. 

It was in the last few days that the men who journeyed 
with a suit-case or two and a steamer' trunk or two enjoyed 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 225 

existence more than did the methodical souls who had such 
and, additionally, one or two trunks of heroic size. I saw 
a martyr who had two giant Saratogas who perspired and 
toiled in the dark with strap and ropes a-plenty and 
wrapping paper, and labored with the spoil of many a port 
which he had acquired in exchange for piasters and rupees 
and guilders and yen. He would be happy in weeks to 
come, when he was once more back in the old homestead, 
but in the meantime he was puzzling over practical geometry 
and the statute of limitations, and with reflex motor action. 

It was quietly going the round of the ship that one of 
Othe still young men who do things without making a fuss 
had slipped away from the party for a time while it was in 
Yokohama and had made a brave attempt to ascend 
Fujiyama. I trailed down the rumor, and after many 
an effort induced the gentleman to describe his attempt. 
Mr. Snyder of Yonkers, for it was he who tried to scale 
Fuji, told me that he proceeded from Tokyo for Gotembra, 
and in the Fuji-ya Inn made preparations for the ascent. 
When he set out, it was with two coolies and a horse goriki. 

“ I rode horseback for four miles,” Mr. Snyder said, 
“ and then led the animal over rough roads to Tarobo, 
where we halted for supper. Our shelter was a mountain 
hut about ten feet square. The food was native dishes, and 
I ate little of it. It was too cold for sleep. An editor 
joined the wide-awakes at two o’clock in the morning to 
be fresh on the job for news and adventure. 

“ We started at 8 o’clock in the morning, and at two 
thousand feet struck the snow line. From then on, it was 
a steep and toilsome ascent for hours, sometimes in the 
mists and finally above the clouds with a wonderful pano¬ 
rama and the ocean stretching far away. At all times the 
wind blew with frightful velocity, and at about four thou¬ 
sand feet elevation every object was encrusted with ice. 
The ascent became more difficult and the mercury sank to 
below zero. The intense exertion required on slippery ice 
at this altitude kept the blood in circulation. At some- 


226 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


where about nine thousand feet my stomach gave way, and 

with the increased danger in the slopes I was in a bad 

plight, but we kept at it. Later on I was forced to rest, 
and then all hands resumed the effort. Finding myself 
feeling worse and worse, I asked the men to dig away snow 
from the nearest hut and rest there, but the men refused. 
For a time we attempted progress, but the men refused to 
put up at the hut overnight and finally there was nothing 
for us to do but descend. 1 was informed that we were 

not much more than five or six hundred feet from the 

summit, when we started the descent. As Japanese papers 
seemed to regard an attempt to climb Fuji in mid-winter 
as a wonderful thing, my wounded feelings were some¬ 
what appeased.” 

In the meantime a couple of the tourists were at work 
on a little publication which was to commemorate the trip. 
As one of them confided in a threnody later in the run 
over to the Golden Gate, the effort was made under dis¬ 
advantages which the two rash men did not contemplate. 
The ship’s printing office was necessarily intended only for 
the producing of menu cards and a few short, incidental 
notices, and when it was subjected to the strain of a four- 
page paper with a one-sheet supplement, its capacity was 
cruelly grilled; and not alone that. The good printer was 
a patriotic son of the Fatherland, whose familiarity with 
English was barely beginning, whose knowledge of the 
pesky Yankee writing was not remarkable, and whose 
English dictionary was lost. 

These were but a few of the handicaps which preceded 
the appearance of The Wonder of the Deep, so named 
because it was a miracle that any paper could be born under 
the conditions. The publication was dated: 

“ Clarksville, Cleveland County, Ohayo, Jan. 28, 1910.” 

It was “ consecrated to all who pay 20 sen a copy.” 
One of the cablegrams was a “ Rooter’s Dispatch ” ffom 
Calcutta, confiding that “ the baseball team of the Gordon 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 227 

Highlanders has issued a challenge to the yet unborn team 
of the Cleveland’s return trip.” A list of the editorial 
staff was printed, and the society editress was revealed as 
Miss G. U. Ess. Among the advertisements was this: 

“Wanted,— To find the Southern Cross. Mr. John Lover and 
Miss May Willing.” 

The publication contained a number of “ features,” 
among them a partial list of the celebrities of the expedition. 
It had — but the editor said that the subject was painful 
to him, that he was like the man who was compelled to 
use a toothpick in fencing with a master of the fencing art. 
At any rate he had made a stab when nobody else was ready 
to enter where angels fear to follow. His reward was,— 
well, the subject is still painful to him. Let him rest 
in peace. 

The anniversary of the Kaiser’s birth came on one of 
the days between Honolulu and San Francisco. In honor 
of the emperor the dining-rooms were decorated with the 
ensign of Germany and with the German naval flag, and 
a congratulary telegram was sent to his majesty. The day 
was made a holiday on the ship. 

As the good ship approached the end of the voyage 
presentations were arranged and passengers testified in sub¬ 
stantial manner to their appreciation of the value and the 
success of the efforts of the captain and the first officer. 
The gifted head chaperon, who had charmed passengers by 
her beautiful description of the Bay of Naples, made the 
speeches. Her work was one of the treats of the trip, 
original in diction and charming and graceful in delivery. 
The speech of presentation to the captain is given in full: 

“ Captain Dempwolf: 

“ Fifteen weeks ago you received on board your ship six hun¬ 
dred and fifty passengers. At the same time you received this 
company of strangers — so those of us who know you best believe — 
into your warm German heart. 

“ Although there are others who could have performed this 
pleasant duty more ably than I, yet it has fallen to me to have 
the privilege and honor of conveying to you, from the members of 


228 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


the first Around the World Clark party, a message of thanks and 
appreciation for what you have done to make this cruise the grand 
and glorious success it has been; and also, of tendering to you this 
testimonial of our regard to you as an able commander, a courteous 
gentleman, and a genial friend. You have been untiring in your 



Courtesy of the Hamburg-American Line 

CAPTAIN C. DEMPWOLF 

quiet efforts to promote our comfort and pleasure, but more 
especially our safety, and in the knowledge of your skillful 
management of this great ship, we have rested in peace and 
security. We have lain down at night to sleep — not in fear, but 
in peace, knowing that on the bridge above our heads, a constant 
march was treading, a watchful eye was open, a faithful heart 
was beating ‘ all through the night.’ In this great world cruise, 
just ending, we have visited many unfamiliar countries, and met 










AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


229 


many new and strange peoples, and we have felt that, being so 
large a body of tourists, we were — in a measure — representing 
our country. In lesser numbers, you and your excellent staff have 
also been representing your country to us Americans who have 
been in such close association with you these many weeks — and 
we are thus in closer touch — have a keener appreciation of the great 
Fatherland who may well be proud of the sons, proud of their fine 
courtesy, their kindness of heart, their keen intelligence — of all 
those qualities that belong to ‘ one who bears without abuse the 
grand old name of gentleman.’ 

“ We congratulate you, Captain, on the attainment of your 
thirty-third year of seamanship, your nineteenth year of captaincy; 
and we are glad to be participants in your one hundredth 
round trip. 

“ We are glad, also, that we are passengers on the completion 
of your one million miles of sea travel made as commander,— 
this one million miles having been made without a single accident 
— even so much as the parting of a line. 

“This unparalleled record, we believe, is not a happening — 
not an accident, but the result of that rare combination of qualities 
that go to make up a wise, intelligent, careful, efficient commander. 
And we have a just pride in sailing under a captain who for meri¬ 
torious services in the past has received decorations from the Czar 
of Russia, the Sultan of Turkey, the King of Prussia, and, more 
than all, who wears upon his breast tonight a Decoration 
from his Emperor, whose birthday we celebrated today. We may 
have given you trouble, Captain, but if so, please forget it; and 
when you look at this reminder of this occasion, say to yourself, 
‘After all, they were — for a time — my family — and a father 
forgives his children. I held their lives in my hands. I brought 
them to their desired haven, and this gift from them comes as a 
message of affectionate remembrance. I will remember them — 
and kindly—and they will not forget me!’ 

“ We will think of you at Borneo when you take that long 
tramp out to the Sporting Field under a March sun! 

“ We will perspire with you all the way through the Red Sea ! 

“But no matter what the weather — all the same we will wish 
that we were with you. No, Captain, we will not forget you. 
We will soon scatter to our many homes in the United States, but ~ 
the Atlantic is not so wide, but that our united hand-clasp will 
reach across it, to give you greeting when you return to your 
Fatherland. 

“ And so, dear Captain, when you turn the prow of the 
Cleveland out through the Golden Gate toward the setting sun, 
may the great deep deal kindly with you, may the breezes of 
heaven blow gently over you, and waft you in safety back to your 
home— to your beloved Fatherland — to the dear aged mother 
who awaits you — to the two sons who must be proud of their 
heritage — and to the little maid who holds your heart captive. 

“ And now — God bless you. 

“ Auf Wiedersehen ! ” 


It was early morning when we moved to the Kosmos 
wharf in San Francisco and tied up, once again in the land 


230 


AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


which gave us birth. Then came the scenes on the pier, 
and the tedious and trying hours when the customs examina¬ 
tions were taking place. And after that, one final gee whiz 
and the voyagers were on their way to hotels. 

Much might be written about cold San Francisco, cold 
in temperature and in patriotism, where the American flags 
seen in two days scarcely equaled those seen in a quarter 
of an hour in Nagasaki or Kobe or Osaka. Much might 
be written about Los Angeles and lovely Pasadena. Much, 
too, might be told about the trip overland by way of New 
Orleans. But this book is all too long, and our dear home¬ 
land is familiar to some extent, at least, even to her children 
from states distant from California and the Sunny Southland. 


What does one learn in touring the world ? 

It depends on the individual. One man may see glorious 
sights and then spend the evening in the smoking-room, 
playing poker. Another may see them and write for hours 
in his diary and in letters to his closest friends. A victim 
of Wanderlust is inspired by the beauty and the romance. 
A man with a different cast of mind will be silent for hours 
and feel the deeper, metaphysical lesson. All depends on 
the individual mind and the individual heart. One man 
may learn nothing except to slaughter time; another may 
be heartened for the noblest struggles and the most splen¬ 
did victories. 

One learns that the world is small; another that it is 
unbounded. Pardon a passing illustration by myself, 
because one can illustrate by his own view better than by 
the view-angles of anybody else. To me the world appears 
smaller than in the days when I lay on the kitchen floor and 
studied the j’ografy with the wonderful reds and yellows 
and blues and the pictures of lions and Hottentots. I con¬ 
trived to worry along amid Arabs in Cairo with but the 
meekest apology for French to reinforce my English. In 
Colombo a theologue from the home city called, merely 



AS FAR AS THE EAST IS FROM THE WEST 


23 


because he hailed from Hartford. In the far-away and 
over-peopled Canton a man called for the same reason. The 
same story was told in Honolulu. Even had 1 wished, I 
could not escape from the home town. 

Against that, Smith and Jones marvel at the world’s 
size. All depends on the angle of view, sir. 

But every true lover of his country learns one lesson 
still more deeply, the love of home. You never think so 
fondly of your own land as w T hen you are on the other side 
of the world. And that means that you realize that the 
case is the same with the Portugee who leaves Madeira to 
land in Honolulu and with the Hindu who sails from 
Calcutta to earn his bread in San Francisco. You learn to 
broaden, and to have charity for God’s children, wherever 
they may be. 


”AUF WlEDERSEHEN! ” 



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